Gridtop's windows, panels and menus behave the same way wherever you meet them. This chapter explains that behaviour once, so that later chapters can concentrate on what each window is for.
The built-in apps open from the app drawer with a double-click (3.2). The windows that belong to an object, such as an agent's chatbox, a Task's Define Task window or a Web Front's window, open from the object's right-click menu or with a double-click on the object.
Drag a window's title bar to move it; drag any edge or corner to resize it. Gridtop remembers where each window is, how large, and whether it is rolled up or filling the screen, and puts it back the same way when you reload the page or open your Gridtop again.
The title-bar buttons are the same on every window:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Close | Closes the window. The first click arms it, reading Click again to close; the second closes it, so a stray click never loses your place. |
| Maximize / Pop Down | Fills Gridtop with the window, and returns it to its size. |
| Window Shade | Rolls the window up into its drawer icon, out of the way. Click the icon to roll it down again. |
| Break Out | Moves the window out of Gridtop into a window of its own (below). |
| D | Dock to Descriptor Panel: places the window inside the descriptor panel of the object it belongs to (10.3). |
| L | Lock Window: pins the window where it is. Click again to release it. |
| ? | What's This?: a line of help about the window. |
Break Out. A window broken out leaves the page for a window of its own: an ordinary pop-up in a browser, or a native window in Autocomputing '26, which you can snap or move to another monitor. Nothing is copied or reloaded, so a chat, a playing video or Index carries on as it was. In its own window the same button reads Break In and puts it back where it was on the grid; closing that window puts it back too, so nothing is lost with it. Where each window last stood outside is remembered on that computer.
Maximize fills Gridtop with a window, the most comfortable way to read a long conversation or work in the Editor; Pop Down returns it to its place and size. A few small windows, such as Properties, keep a fixed size.
When windows overlap, the one you last clicked comes to the front. Floating panels, such as an agent's tuning panel, always stay above windows.
Some windows belong to an object, and can float freely over Gridtop or be docked in the object's descriptor panel in the right pane:
To dock a floating panel, click its D button; to bring it out again, click Pop Out. It is the same conversation, and the same tuning, in either place, and a message you have typed but not sent comes along too. A docked panel follows the descriptor panel's own tabs and height control (3.5).
When Gridtop needs a word from you, such as a name for a new folder or a yes before an important step, it shows a small dialog in the middle of the screen. Answer and confirm, or cancel, and nothing happens. Questions about saving, deleting or removing sound a low alert.
Gridtop always asks before it does something that matters: Publish to your domain? before a file goes to your website, Restore …? before a website returns to an earlier state, Delete this file? before a file is deleted. Read these questions before you answer them; the step that follows reaches your website, your data or your drive.
Silver menus (3.6) close without a choice when you click outside them, or click their chip again.
