well, most users generally have a small set of operations they want readily accessible with a pointing device at all times, or status information they want to be available at a glance, without obscuring or interfering with window layout.
a persistent window, aka panel, is the conventional way to provide that.
it's simply a conceptual extension of the 'prompt' into a gui environment. nothing has surpassed the panel concept in the past forty years that it has been dominant.
i expect the 'panel' is the primary feature vehicle of any desktop environment - they are nearly synonymous. nearly every window manager also contains support for panels, even if they are not part of a desktop environment that specifically provides them. what do you use?
Okay, but why should not a panel be just an ordinary window without the "decorations" (close/minimize buttons etc) of a separate ordinary app? You know, the first time the idea of the panel disturbed me in a negative way was in Windows 98 where the panel (the taskbar) would often remain visible in some quirky way during (some rare times even after) the moment the display switches to a full-screen graphics mode when I launch the game.
The Windows taskbar literally was just another window but without any decorations. There was even a bug in Windows 95 where you could close the taskbar.
As for the full screen bug you experienced, I don’t recall ever seeing that but Windows 9x had a plethora of weird bugs so it wouldn’t surprise me if you had issues.
well, everything in a typical linux desktop environment runs inside a window manager, including the panel. some of them are integrated to an extent, but you're essentially describing the status quo.
and microsoft does all kinds of weird shit nobody has an explanation for.
a persistent window, aka panel, is the conventional way to provide that.
it's simply a conceptual extension of the 'prompt' into a gui environment. nothing has surpassed the panel concept in the past forty years that it has been dominant.
i expect the 'panel' is the primary feature vehicle of any desktop environment - they are nearly synonymous. nearly every window manager also contains support for panels, even if they are not part of a desktop environment that specifically provides them. what do you use?