From: David King Date: 23:24 on 27 Dec 2006 Subject: Give me back my damn focus! Why is it that nobody can write a decent focus model? I've been using Opera on my Mac recently due to some (non-focus related) Safari hate. Opera has a sidebar, where it puts things like a half-assed mail client, a half-assed IRC client, history, bookmarks, a list of current transfers, and the kitchen sink. Most actions performed on this sidebar result in a new window being opened (for instance, opening an IMAP folder or a history item). but the focus model is totally unclear. If I click on an IMAP folder, then hit "Up" on my keyboard, will it move "Up" one message within that folder, or one folder in the folder-list? This appears to be totally random. I work nearly totally from the keyboard, so this bites. Unpredictable focus behaviour is worthy of hate, but it gets better. If I've used the sidebar in the current session, even if it is *closed*, it appears to capture my "enter" key. If, for instance, I try to type a search term into a text box, and hit "enter", fully expecting it to "Submit" (pun intended), it instead opens up my last- viewed mail folder, because that is what the side-bar has focused. I wasn't aware that different controls could simultaneously have the focus, let alone pick-and-choose which keys they wanted to receive. So in order to do anything involving the "Enter" key (like typing a URL), I have to open the "Keyboard viewer," a small application that simulates a keyboard. Strangely, that "enter" key works just fine.
From: Yossi Kreinin Date: 11:20 on 28 Dec 2006 Subject: Re: Give me back my damn focus! David King wrote: > Why is it that nobody can write a decent focus model? Probably because BitMover, Inc. have patented their award-winning focus model. Which goes like this: * You don't need no stinky focus. * All mouse events are handled by the window where the mouse is located. * Each key on the keyboard goes to at most one window. This means that you never run into ambiguties of the kind "what does pressing Home mean". Clearly pressing Home means "go to the beginning of the list of files". And if you meant "go to the beginning of the text in the text window", go and look for your file in the list, and then use your mouse, or you can use the arrow keys. Now, isn't that better than all those focus-pocus nonsence of your fancy GUIs?
From: Robert Rothenberg Date: 18:54 on 28 Dec 2006 Subject: Re: Give me back my damn focus! On 27/12/06 23:24 David King wrote: > Why is it that nobody can write a decent focus model?... Ah, that reminds me of a UI hate: have the focus follow the mouse. Extremely useful, until the app you are using shows a popup, which disappears because you didn't immediately move your mouse over it.
From: Aaron J. Grier Date: 19:27 on 28 Dec 2006 Subject: Re: Give me back my damn focus! On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 06:54:18PM +0000, Robert Rothenberg wrote: > On 27/12/06 23:24 David King wrote: > > Why is it that nobody can write a decent focus model?... > > Ah, that reminds me of a UI hate: have the focus follow the mouse. > Extremely useful, until the app you are using shows a popup, which > disappears because you didn't immediately move your mouse over it. there's focus follows mouse, and there's focus does autoraise. I hate the second in conjunction with the first, as it causes exactly the problem you describe. focus follows mouse makes it easy to shuffle contexts without undue clicking, but breaks UIs where multiple focusable elements are dependent on each other. focus follows mouse isn't practical in OSX since the menu bar at the top of the screen is dependent on the current application with focus, and if there happen to be windows of other applications between yours and the menu bar, the menu bar will change on the way to click it. I hate that bad. it was one of the things that pissed me off with macOS, and it was kept for OSX.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 19:35 on 28 Dec 2006 Subject: Re: Give me back my damn focus! > I hate that bad. it was one of the things that pissed me off with > macOS, and it was kept for OSX. On my Macbook I'm using DejaMenu in conjunction with ControllerMate to make the middle button pop up the menus as a contextual menu. It's hateful having to use two applications to do this. It's even more hateful to have every application and toolkit do menus differently, though. If only Apple had an input manager preference pane with even 10% of the capability of ControllerMate.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 03:42 on 29 Dec 2006 Subject: Re: Give me back my damn focus! * Robert Rothenberg <robrwo@xxxxx.xxx> [2006-12-28 20:00]: > Ah, that reminds me of a UI hate: have the focus follow the > mouse. Extremely useful, until the app you are using shows a > popup, which disappears because you didn't immediately move > your mouse over it. Dialog windows are hateful, period. I haven't seen a single windowing model where they weren't a massive posterior pain. Regards,
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