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Tightly Coupled Windows

     Tightly Coupled Windows in    which relationships between the contents of windows are    easily specified and changed. For example, synchronized    scrolling would allow a user to specify two or more windows    to be scrolled with only a single user action. In hierarchical    browsing selection of a chapter title in a table of contents    window causes the full text to be scrolled to the chapter in a    second window. Some of these benefits can be achieved through proper use of Netscape frames.

  Key features of Tightly Coupled Windows

Synchronized Scrolling         :  A simple coordination is synchronized scrolling  ,the  scroll bar of one windows is tightly coupled with other windows . Synchronization might be on line to line base , on a proportional bases  ,  or keyed to matching tokens in the two windows . In our  implementation of Tightly Coupled Windows , we have synchronized scrolling in which all our windows are synchronized on one key action.

Hierarchical Browsing         : Another main feature of Tightly Coupled Windows is Hierarchical Browsing . If one window contains the table of contents of the document , selection of chapter title by a pointing device may lead to display , in the adjoining window  , its content . In our implementation we have month as the main windows , by selecting month it display the contents i.e.: total picture of that month in the second window .

Direct selection / Pop Up  child windows       : Another Tightly Coupled idea is direct selection in which pointing at the icon , a word in the text  ,  or variable name in the programs pops up as  a child windows . In our implementation of  tightly coupled windows we are popping up a image windows for the current selection which is used to display the image and some text describing the image .

Benefits of tightly coupled windows

1.  Immediate visibility of results of actions.
2.  Less key strokes used for the desired results.
3.  Replace typing with pointing/selecting.
4.  A better way of representing information .
5.  Fast  browsing .

Problems with tightly coupled windows  

User point of view

• Sometimes use of tightly coupled windows is  misleading .
• Interface provided by the tightly coupled windows is slow .
• Loss in concentration .

Developer point of view

• It is very difficult to maintain bi directional coordination between the tightly coupled windows.
• It takes lots more man hours to develop an interface which is tightly coupled.

If you have any comments and suggestion please mail to  Vicky shiv or  Brian Sears