Re: panel focus

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

Every person I've had upgrade to GNOME 2 has commented on the weird
"panel gets lighter" thing to me.

Additionally, this has a not insignificant usability cost because it
means when you use the panel your current focused window almost always
ends up unfocused. This makes the panel feel like a window, which it
shouldn't. I don't know how to describe this except that it makes the
panel feel "heavy" somehow that it steals focus from windows.

Compare this to GNOME1 where focus is temporarily snatched from the
window, but as soon as you are done it goes back to the window. Feels
*MUCH* more natural.

Is there a reason mouse clicks should ever focus the panel like this?
People who are seriously going to be using keyboard nav for the panel
probably aren't going to be using mice. Can we only do this weird focus
voodoo on keyboard activation? i.e. you can only focus the panel using
the keyboard (or maybe mouse clicks *directly* on the panel with no
dragging or anything). 

For non-disabled users this focus stuff is a significant net loss, so
I'd like to find a solution that doesn't mess with normal users at all
but still leaves the panel accessible. It seems restricting focusing of
the panel to keyboard mechanisms would work.

-Seth

On Mon, 2002-03-04 at 01:44, Bill Haneman wrote:
> 
> Seth said:
> 
> > 
> > I agree. Focusing the first widget makes a lot more sense than
> > highlighting the entire bar.
> > 
> > -Seth
> 
> I have to disagree with you here.  Besides the issue of what to do
> when there are no applets in the bar, remember that in order to pop up
> the context menu for the panel you must be able to focus the "panel
> only"
> and not a child widget.  If this requires "focus navigate to first 
> widget, then Ctrl-TAB to move up one level" (the alternative) then I
> think
> you have traded a small annoyance for a significant eccentricity, and
> I don't think it's a good tradeoff.
> 
> Calum, Padraig, and I talked about this at some length, and in the
> end we felt that the need to focus containers was strong enough to
> require an extra gesture to focus children.
> 
> -Bill
> 
> > On Sat, 2002-03-02 at 23:37, jacob berkman wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2002-03-02 at 19:50, Seth Nickell wrote:
> > > > You mean as opposed to the whole bar?
> > >
> > > yeah.  although i don't know what to do when there are no applets.
> > >
> > > i would guess the same as when there are no children of a ?box.
> > >
> > > jacob
> > > --
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