No, I'm not saying it's preference. I think we agree, actually. By "workflow", I meant the way your particular work tends to split across apps and windows. F

No, I'm not saying it's preference. I think we agree, actually. By "workflow", I meant the way your particular work tends to split across apps and windows. For me, it's a better default to switch entire applications than windows. There are edge cases, sure, like the chat one you mention, or different browser windows, but I'd rather just switch from Excel to IE to Outlook than have to tab through my history of open documents and browser tabs (curse you IE) to get back to my Outlook window. It sounds like for you, it's the opposite: the better default would be to switch windows, not apps. The question then is which is the most common pattern, but I don't know of any actual research on this. You can't generalize from personal experience, plural of anecdote and all that.