>>>We are in agreement about modal forms. The only time I use them is when there is information which is absolutely essential before the app can proceed.
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>>My take on this is a bit more nuanced.
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>>User can only deal with one task at a time, and though I appreciate that advanced users want to be able to flip from one form to another, it more often than not creates chaos for the less advanced users.
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>>Unless there is a significant need to have more forms open at the same time, its more ergnomic to let users only deal with one form at a time. We should not forget that though we might be advanced users, but the large part of the users of our software are not.
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>>For this cateory of users it is more efficient to prevent them to open a pile of forms to lose sight of what they are doing, but in stead guide them sequentially through the steps they need to perform. This sometimes is associated with "Goal driven" GUIs rather than the still popular "Data driven" Gui's. Modal forms do lend themselves perfectly for goal driven GUI's.
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>>Walter,
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>The user can decide if they want multiple forms open or not. Windows itself clearly proves they can. Designing software so that the option is not available at all is wrong IMO.

Again my take on this is a bit more nuanced. Software should be simple to use with a simple interface. The whole event driven model introduced in Windows 3.0 twenty years ago was great for advanced users, but developers went crazy with it and created software that went away from the goal driven approach in DOS applications and created GUI that became too complex for the average user of the software.

For a lot of applications it just makes more sense to guide them through the steps to achieve their goals rather then simply giving them options to perform some action on a given dataset. Its a total different mindset and the older I grow and the more I speak with the users of the software the more I'm getting convinced that we got it all wrong in the past 2 decades. Now seeing how Phone and tablets apps are being developed, it seems evident we should put more effort in creating goal driven software.

And in the latter, modal forms are just great.

But otoh, no single approach fits all.