> I was hoping to read some UX insight into how to make those kinds of actions less obnoxious without losing their helpful functionality when it's needed.
An initial ideas I had, fairly trivial in the context of OpenOffice and Word asking to return to your previous state:
If a short period of time has elapsed since closing the application, simply resume state. Short period of time would have to be determine, of course. But it's fair to say that if I close an application and open it again within a minute, I probably want to resume the state. Additional conditions could be added based on testing: didn't save in the last close might be a good indicator.
An initial ideas I had, fairly trivial in the context of OpenOffice and Word asking to return to your previous state:
If a short period of time has elapsed since closing the application, simply resume state. Short period of time would have to be determine, of course. But it's fair to say that if I close an application and open it again within a minute, I probably want to resume the state. Additional conditions could be added based on testing: didn't save in the last close might be a good indicator.