Re: VERY cool UI fix (long but hopefully interesting)

["Ken Fox" <kfox ford com>]

delmar watkins writes:
> What is the closest thing on a screen?  The edge, because you don't
> have to slow down or navigate to hit it

Actually the "edge" is the biggest thing on the screen for the same
reasons you state. The closest thing on the screen is the pixel under
the mouse.

> As far as coding goes, it would require simply that hitting the edge
> with the mouse would mean triggering an event:  maybe even mapping it to a
> keypress, which would then do some action.

It's not quite that easy because of focus policy. If the window manager
is obeying focus-follows-mouse then what application gets the edge-flip
event? This is the same problem that screen-edge menubars and applets
have -- they can be used to extend applications, but moving the mouse to
them makes the "current" application ambiguous.

Somebody mentioned using an active focus timeout to give the user time
to move onto an applet before the focus changed. That's a good idea.
It could be combined with sloppy-focus-follows-mouse (where the focus
only changes if the mouse moves someplace where the focus is useful) and
a focus-follows-mouse that activates the timer when the mouse stops
moving.

Anyways, rather than an X event, it might be nice to use CORBA. The same
mechanism could be used to send CORBA messages from external menubars,
applets, etc. Conceptually it turns the whole desktop into a container app
with the "real" apps operating like plug-ins.

- Ken