Alternatives to MDI layout?
As WPF has no built-in MDI support I was looking around for alternatives for a rather large graphical work oriented application. The application will have a lot of different widgets, and for a lot of those the usable area will be different in size: there will ba a widget showing a 512*512 image, but also a widget with 3 buttons, another one showing a listbox, etc. There will be multiple instances of those widgets, and for eg the image widget, it is preferrably that they are all visible at the same time to be usefull.
Looking at some alternatives, I couldn't really find anything that seems to give the same ease of use as a typical MDI app (think PhotoShop). This is what I tried so far:
- only tabs, like today's browsers: impossible. 90% of the application is hidden.
- docking layout: not bad, but wastes a lot of screen space (eg docking a small widget in the same area as a large widget, because they logically belong together) and might get unmanagable since the number of widgets that can be opened is basically unlimited
- docking layout combined with tabs: same as above, but somewhat better as it makes it easier to organize everything
- multiple floating toplevel windows on the desktop: not bad, but sometimes confusing because the desktop (or whatever windows are on there) is visible in between the windows
None of these was really convincing me (note that I did not talk to any users). So I was wondering: am I just so used to MDI (spending tons of time in VS2008/VS2010 with floating windows extension/PS/...) that I cannot enjoy alternatives, or are there no true alternatives and is MDI the only way for an app like this?