Re: A cross-platform status icon api

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Matthias Clasen wrote:

> ...
>
> > 5) There is an implied focus problem; does the bubble steal focus when 
> > it demands attention?  Almost certainly it shouldn't, but otherwise how 
> > does the screenreader or magnifier user notice it?  We may need some 
> > kind of API for this - but the WM hints for urgency and attention don't 
> > seem to fit this case.
> >    
>
> The bubble certainly should not steal focus. One of the basic premises
> of notifications is that something should not be a notification unless
> it can safely be ignored.
>
> Regarding the keynav, would it work to put notifications in the 
> "focus-me-harder" Ctrl-Alt-Tab chain, which already has panels and
> other skip-alt-tab windows ?
>  
Maybe; but it seems like a rather cumbersome approach and seems to 
conflict with the notion of "timeout", because it will necessarily take 
longer to find such a window.  I think we need some other desktop 
"urgency" or "attention" focus behavior here to hook into, for instance 
so that a user can immediately jump to "the last thing demanding 
attention".  By coordinating this with the WM we could use this 
mechanism to jump to the window demanding attention for the WM-spec 
case, and/or the bubble in the status icon case, maybe there's a case 
for the notification area too.  All of these are similar issues, it 
seems to me; we need to get the user's attention without stealing focus, 
and thus the user needs an efficient mechanism for focussing such 
objects on-demand.

Bill

> Matthias
>
>
>