Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

5-7. Applications Abolished

The time it takes your favorite application to complete a given task doubles with each new revision.

—Lincoln Spector

The present structure of computer software, consisting of an operating system under which application programs execute, is inherently modal. This implies that for an interface to be nonmodal, an approach that does not include applications in their present form is required.

Because gestures, such as those that invoke commands, in one application may not be available in another, you must be conscious of which application is currently active. But you cannot reliably do this when your locus of attention is the task you are trying to accomplish. You will sometimes use a gesture with either no result or the ...