Re: panel focus

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Seth Nickell wrote:

> I'm not sure I see how its particularly special cased. 

Sorry, it was that you said "I'm not exactly sure how to give an
abstract description of when the panel should or shouldn't be focused,
but I can give a list of examples"... they sounded like special cases to
me :)

> "Don't take focus from the window unless keynav is used or the widget on the 
> panel needs focus to operate". 

I think it's the "needs" part we're going to struggle with here.  Few if
any controls (other than text boxes, perhaps) 'need' keyboard focus
before you can operate them with the mouse.  But as soon as you start
they still get keyboard focus anyway, because the computer has know way
of knowing whether the next thing you want to do is going to be with the
mouse or the keyboard.

I guess as you say it might be possible to work out some scheme whereby
if you gave focus to something on the panel with the mouse, then the
panel should 'remember' that you did so and be clever enough to give
focus back to the last application that had it when you're 'finished'
(although I'd hate to have to define what 'finished' meant!).  But that
kind of breaks if you want to give focus to a panel object with the
mouse but then actually navigate/use it with the keyboard, which might
well be the case with an applet that (say) had a couple of text fields
in it, or with a swallowed app.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems