Re: panel prelight on focus

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Chris Chabot wrote:
> 
> 1) All panel 'applets' are not keyboard enabled, if you want to change
> sound mixer, time, etc via keyboard, you have to use the application or
> control center to do so.

You may not be able to change things in the taskbar directly, but you
can at least tab to the appropriate icon on the taskbar and press Enter
to launch the application.  The Windows task bar only really has one
'applet' in the GNOME sense, though, everything else is just a launcher
or a menu, really.

Unfortunately, in GNOME we have several applets that have no
corresponding "applications", e.g. gnome stock ticker, gweather.  So our
panel keynav solution has to be a bit more complex.

> 3) The only 'other' required functionality of their pannel is switching
> between windows, which can be done thru ALT+TAB, so it also does not
> require panel keyboard navigation.

It may not "require" it, but it's still implemented.  At least it is in
Windows XP.

> I think this is one of those situations where our trying to do
> everything, and better then everyone else (and everything customizable)
> is making more problems then it is solving when it comes to usability
> and accesability?

Up to a point, perhaps, but I think the basic problem is just that the
panel was designed long before anybody thought about making GNOME
accessible.  So some decisions were made that work great for mouse users
but suck for keyboard users.  Of course we can try and change this over
time, but right now we pretty much have to live with what's there, and
retro-fit as much accessibility into it as we can.

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