Swapping vs Opening

There are two primary window navigation operations: swapping and opening.

Opening and Closing

Opening and closing are the basic window navigation options. Opening a window opens the window at the same size it was the Designer, unless the Start Maximized property is true or the Dock Position is not Floating. To have a floating popup window open at a specific location, make sure to set the Location property of the window in the Designer. If the window was recently open, it will open in its last state due to window caching. See the Cache Policy property for more information.

Swapping

In general, swapping involves closing one window, and then opening another window in its place. This operation can be performed on window in any state: docked or floating, maximized or not. The Start Maximized and Dock Position properties of the window that is being swapped in will be ignored - it will take the dock and maximized state of the window that it is replacing.

This operation is so common in the typical navigation strategy that there is even a version of swapping dedicated to it, the swapTo function. This function eliminates the need to specify the window to swap from - you only need to specify the window to swap to. It will take the current "screen" window - that is, the current maximized window - as the window to swap from.

See also:

system.nav.openWindow

system.nav.swapWindow

system.nav.swapTo