Re: applets and focus indication

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hi Rodney,

On 14 Oct 2002, Rodney Dawes wrote:

> I just took a minute and played with the Workspace Switcher applet.
> It seems to not be broken in regards to drawing focus notification.
>
> A) In multi-workspace mode, if I click on a workspace that is not the
>    current workspace, which has no windows open in it, I get switched
>    to that workspace, and Nautilus grabs focus, so the applet no longer
>    has focus, and thus no rectangle is displayed.
>
> B) In multi-workspace mode, if I click on a workspace that has windows
>    open, but is not the current workspace, the window that received the
>    last mouse click in that workspace (this is the case for me anyway),
>    grabs focus, leaving the applet unfocused, and thus no rectangle.
>
> C) If I click on the current workspace, in a window that is shown in the
>    applet, that window grabs focus, and then the applet has no
>    rectangle, because it has no focus again.
>
> D) If I click on the current workspace, in the area where there are no
>    windows (the desktop area), then the applet retains focus, and the
>    rectangle is drawn.
>
> In all cases, the applet draws the focus rectangle when it does have
> focus. These times may only be a second or less, but mouse clicks don't
> last very long. Also, clicking on the lines separating the workspaces,
> results in the same behavior as case D, as no workspace is switched.
> So, all in all, not having a focus rectangle around the applet, when
> right clicking on an applet, makes sense, as the menu has focus, not
> the applet. I'm going to agree with Havoc on this, and say punt, because
> it is the applet's problem, if it wants to draw focus rectangles around
> the toplevel widget, when it's children have focus.

	How about this case:

	* Click on the panel (or Ctrl-Alt-Tab to it). The tab until
	  the workspace switcher has focus. The prolem here is that
	  the focus indication is extremely poor. You're only seeing
	  two sides of the indication (this is with the default gtk
	  theme) and at that its hard to distinguish the indication.

	The problem is only *really* evident when you're using the
panel without the mouse.

	"But wait! You can't use the workspace switcher using only the
keyboard" - I know, but you still need to access its popup menu. The
actual funcationality of the applet is available using WM keybindings.
And, in any case, this problem isn't only about the workspace
switcher.

Good Luck,
Mark.