[HN Gopher] Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a lega...
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Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a
technical matter?
Author : SeenNotHeard
Score : 33 points
Date : 2026-03-04 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retrocomputing.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrocomputing.stackexchange.com)
| CanopyCoder wrote:
| The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close to
| zero - it's only from today's era of hyper-regulation that we
| might even imagine something like that.
|
| Most likely it was a deliberate technical limitation. After all,
| dialog windows themselves were already overlapped. I remember
| well what a headache it was to program and render graphical
| elements on those old machines (PC AT 80286 with 256 KB of RAM).
| giobox wrote:
| > The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close to
| zero - it's only from today's era of hyper-regulation that we
| might even imagine something like that.
|
| While it's demonstrated to be likely incorrect here, it's not a
| wild theory. Apple and Microsoft spent a lot of time in court
| over the "Look and Feel" cases regarding the windowing UI Apple
| felt Microsoft had stolen. The lawsuit was first filed in '88
| and was widely reported on in tech and mainstream press etc,
| dragging on throughout the 90s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros...
| .
| parl_match wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| > The likelihood of any legal restriction was probably close
| to zero - it's only from today's era of hyper-regulation that
| we might even imagine something like that.
|
| Normally I'd agree with a statement like this. Except this is
| a very specific case.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| That lawsuit happened in response to Window 2.0, and the fact
| that they adopted overlapping windows in 2.0 strongly
| suggests that Microsoft did not think that the change would
| lead to legal action and was taken by surprise.
| jmclnx wrote:
| > Most likely it was a deliberate technical limitation
|
| At the time I remember reading that was kind of the issue. I
| thought the article said something like "when Gates saw the
| Xerox machine, the display had no overlapping windows". So M/S
| cloned it as he saw it.
|
| Once M/S W1.0 was developed he saw the demo again and was
| surprised the windows overlapped. So they rushed 2.0 to fix it.
|
| But funny, with all people on Linux using tiling window
| managers these days, it seems Windows 1.0 was ahead of its time
| :)
| Affric wrote:
| Yeah, it's interesting how the desktop metaphor evolved over
| time but increasing display size and the ability to have
| multiple workspaces surely is a huge part of what makes
| tiling almost work.
|
| And tiling still largely doesn't work with small windows.
| lovich wrote:
| You can tile windows in Windows as well with the windows key+
| arrow buttons.
|
| The default is just left, right, and top, bottom but if you
| install Power Toys and use Fancy Zones you can customize the
| zones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon....
|
| There's also Crop and Lock which can help you cut out
| extraneous parts of certain windows
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/crop-
| and...
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _" when Gates saw the Xerox machine, the display had no
| overlapping windows". So M/S cloned it as he saw it. Once M/S
| W1.0 was developed he saw the demo again and was surprised
| the windows overlapped._
|
| Microsoft had Apple Lisa's in-house, and Charles Simonyi in
| person direct from Xerox PARC, and worked on pre-release
| Macintoshes in coordination with Apple to develop Microsoft
| Word for the Mac, all well in advance of any MSWindows
| development. There is no way the story is as simple as the
| above.
| avadodin wrote:
| They are a bit out of fashion these days.
|
| The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux
| provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it
| seduced people away.
|
| Also, mouse-first tiling was introduced on Windows so
| nowadays it is almost universal to have a degree of tiling.
|
| They are nice for terminals and browsing properly-written web
| pages but for anything with an aspect ratio or a fixed size
| they are clumsy.
|
| Modern tiling-wms often have a floating mode so the
| distinction is more keyboard-wm vs mouse-wm.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| But hey, for 320x200 (8b) / 640x400 (4b) you had a linear
| framebuffer early on, before VESA&Co came along :-D
|
| (this was around IRQ13, IIRC,right?)
| contextfree wrote:
| As far as I've figured out the answer is that some people
| involved (the ex-PARC Scott McGregor and Charles Simonyi iirc)
| genuinely thought tiling was better, while others (Bill Gates?)
| disagreed but went along with it to avoid lawsuits.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| As a tiling window manager user, I think I agree! :D
| somat wrote:
| I think stacking windows looks better, makes for a cool
| screenshot when trying to sell the thing. But tiling windows
| are more ergonomic for actually using the infernal machine.
|
| For me the revelation was that I have never said "Oh boy I sure
| am glad this window partially overlaps this other window" I
| either want one full screen windows or a few windows side by
| side. Why do I have to handle this myself? and went to the dark
| side, a tiling window manager. To the point that it really
| chafes now when I use stacking windows, It feels like I spend
| most of the time shuffling windows around.
|
| To ease the overlapping window pain many linux window managers
| have a feature where the focused window does not have to be the
| top window and this makes things a lot better, you can be
| looking at the top window and typing/clicking on the partially
| obscured bottom window.
| hedgehog wrote:
| To be fair, in the era when resolutions like 512x342 or
| 640x480 were common overlapped windows were quite useful.
| layer8 wrote:
| Most of the time, I want the active application window in the
| middle of the screen, but not necessarily filling the whole
| screen or the whole height, and also not necessarily
| centered. The window position and size depends on its
| contents, what sidebars it has, and so on. This inherently
| leads to overlapping windows. I use a tool that automatically
| moves and resizes windows to the application-specific desired
| position, while also having the ability to arrange a split-
| screen view using keyboard shortcuts when needed.
| kalterdev wrote:
| The primary value of overlapping windows is spacial memory:
| you remember where a given window is positioned on a 2D
| surface. The moment I grasped this I had the "oh boy I sure
| am glad this window partially overlaps this other window."
|
| (At one moment, I used to have around 20 windows on a single
| desktop, on my MacBook with 125% DPI. Too much but possible.
| Now I keep only 6-7.)
|
| This is not to say that dynamic window management is worse.
| Far from it. But it excels at this: dynamic, rapidly changing
| environments, where at almost any given moment something is
| either opening or closing. This is usually the case with
| specialized programs like web browsers or IDE, but not with
| the main system WM.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at
| least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and
| 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95
| that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give
| Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And,
| speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very
| good.
| eschaton wrote:
| "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" is required reading on the matter.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Overlapping was hard, it was one of the core parts of the
| original Macintosh OS, courtesy of Bill Atkinson[1].
|
| 1: https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html
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