A user interface for simultaneously representing tasks and notifications in a computing device. The user interface presents the tasks as reduced size representations of the output of the corresponding tasks which are continually updated. The user interface allows a user to bring a selected task to the foreground or to close the task, both by interacting with the representations of the tasks. The user interface further associates notifications with corresponding tasks by superimposing an icon of the notification on the representation of the corresponding task. The user interface orders and arranges the task representations and icons of the notifications according to certain layout rules.