The icons on the Quick-Launch bar represent applications that aren't running. So dropping a file on them means "run this app with that file". Simple enough.
But a taskbar button represents a window, not an application. So does it mean that the file should replace whatever is in that window? Probably not. Should it cause a single-file-at-a-time app like Notepad to launch another copy of itself? Probably not.
The essential problem here is that the Windows UI design opted to manage windows, not applications. But what users really want to deal with is applications. It was, to my eyes, shortsighted and lazy. (Or necessary to avoid a lawsuit.) MacOS got it right.
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The icons on the Quick-Launch bar represent applications that aren't running. So dropping a file on them means "run this app with that file". Simple enough.
But a taskbar button represents a window, not an application. So does it mean that the file should replace whatever is in that window? Probably not. Should it cause a single-file-at-a-time app like Notepad to launch another copy of itself? Probably not.
The essential problem here is that the Windows UI design opted to manage windows, not applications. But what users really want to deal with is applications. It was, to my eyes, shortsighted and lazy. (Or necessary to avoid a lawsuit.) MacOS got it right.