Moldability starts with the frame
To get to moldable content, the frame must not imply a specific structure for the content.
We got to the current tab-based design of Glamorous Toolkit mostly due to the problem of not being able to close a Spotter in a borderless window. In the meantime, we no longer have the Spotter issue, but we still kept the tabs because we realized that we created a frame that knows almost nothing.
It essentially knows a home tab that we can easily mold, a menu that we can make moldable, and a way to search that is already moldable. This is it. No elaborate global menus. No hardcoded views. We can do this because the actions are bundled with the context in which they apply.
There are certainly things we should improve. For example, a transcript or an inspector over a beacon, the object logging engine, do not work well in a separate tab. But, overall, it’s remarkable in how simple it can be.
Even if not intended from the beginning, the frame design looks not much different from that of a web browser. As many people are able to work with a web browser, this opens all sorts of possibilities, in particular in the areas of education and integrating the work of non-technical people.
Just take a look at this live document:
or this live slideshow:
or many other forms this environment can be molded into:
I find this exciting. What do you think?
