Great. Your mom is *exactly* the person we want to not surprise. (My Mom's
actually too comfortable with software to be this good a tester.)
Remember that we've got a weird hybrid interface that's not pure SDI. In a
pure SDI app like you describe, you can only have one document open at a
time. Every attempt to open another closes the one you're in. In this
case, having close map onto "leave me up with an empty doc" makes some
sense. You're very conscious that you're staying in the app, since that
top-level window is the only one you ever see. Pure SDI interfaces are just
as application-centric as MDI ones, just not as complex.
By contrast, we've got a document-centric browser-like "Multiple SDI"
interface which allows you to simultaneously work with multiple documents.
It tends to favor simultaneous use of multiple documents, and presumes that
selecting and launching documents from your desktop is fairly easy. As you
and Brian rightly point out, the one place this UI choice is weakest is for
serial use -- immediately editing one document followed by another.
If it weren't for web browsers, explaining the MSDI paradigm to your Mom
would be hard, and we'd be stuck in a pure SDI vs. pure MDI debate. :-) I
continue to believe that anyone who's spent any time working with Netscape
or IE is unlikely to be too surprised by our behavior, since we're very
deliberately mimicing them.
Paul