Re: how to focus on desktop automatically if no windows open?

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Elijah Newren wrote:...

> WM_DESKTOP actually is inherently different from most
> other windows in that sense because it has no window manager
> decorations.  
>  
Unless there are no icons on the desktop, we can focus an icon by 
default, which gives visual indication that the desktop window is 
"active".  The user can still get to the desktop's context/right-click 
menu via Control-F10.

> > For people using the keyboard intensively (including those using
> > it exclusively for a11y reasons), I think having focus go nowhere
> > is very rarely useful.  That's pretty much the crux of my argument.
> > Having nothing focused means you have to explicitly Ctrl+Alt+Tab
> > before you can do anything.  That seems to me like forcing users
> > to do something repetitively that the computer really could just
> > do for them automatically.
> >    
>
> Makes sense.  Note, though, that both sloppy and mouse focus modes
> have a keynav/mousenav switch (which gets toggled automatically as the
> user interacts with the desktop) because the two navigation modes have
> inherently conflicting constraints.  Thus if your argument is based on
> intensive use of keyboard navigation (which has the same invariants as
> click-to-focus but much different ones than sloppy or mouse focus),
> then we've reduced the problem to what the default should be for
> click-to-focus (and, in particular, we can ignore a lot of the
> potential objections I was raising for this requested behavior).
>  
I think so too - because as you say we already detect 'keynav mode'.

>  
>
> > Your counter-case:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Anyway the case:  If a modal dialog to an app which has focus appears
> > > and the author explicitly requests that the modal dialog not get focus
> > > when it is launched, then the only sane choice for focus is the
> > > no-focus-window.  Leaving the window that had focus with focus would
> > > be horribly misleading because the app will ignore keyboard input to
> > > that window.  Focusing the modal dialog would be wrong because it is
> > > an unexpected popup and the user could accidentally dismiss the
> > > important warning/error it contains--or even worse, select an
> > > inappropriate action that they didn't want merely because they
> > > happened to be typing at the time when the window appeared.  Focusing
> > > a different window on the screen would likewise be wrong because user
> > > keystrokes shouldn't be transferred to some other random application
> > > just because of the appearance of an unexpected modal dialog.  By
> > > deduction the correct thing usability wise in this case is for
> > > "nothing" to have focus but to allow global keybindings (such as
> > > alt-tab) to work.
> > >      
> > I really can't think of a scenario where I would consider that
> > application to be behaving nicely.  If accidentally activating
> > the dialog (say I hit space, because I'm typing something else)
> > would do something bad, then maybe the dialog just shouldn't
> > have a default button.
> >    
Yes, this seems like a horribly broken application behavior. 

> And disable all hotkeys as well?  Those could also be hit accidentally
> causing a bad action.  And disable special keybindings like alt-f4 so
> that the user doesn't close an error message before getting to read
> it.  And...  well, if we're disabling everything, why not just defocus
> the stupid thing?
>
>  
>
> > If the window never gets focus, how
> > would people with screen readers ever know it's there?
> >    
>
> via the demands-attention hint, of course.  (The general "unexpected
> window tried to come up, let the user know without stealing focus"
> stuff we have)
>
>  
>
> > Anyway, that's something of a different case.  We're just
> >    
>
> Yes, I was following Bill's tangent.  (Though an interesting one, I
> might add.  We do suck at providing onscreen indications of focus in
> many cases, and if it's an accessibility requirement, then perhaps we
> need to put more thought and effort into it.  And maybe even ignore
> application requests to not have window decorations ;-)  Sorry, I just
> couldn't resist mentioning that...)
>  
As a11y requirements go, it's one of the few absolute ones (on a par 
with "must be able to do all tasks via keynav").
In most cases, there should be some widget with focus in any active 
toplevel window, in which case the widget should be focussed.  If apps 
don't do this, then it's the app that is in violation of a11y 
requirements, not the desktop environment.  There will always be a few 
broken apps, but we don't want to have a broken DE.

Apps whose primary dialogs request no decorations are probably not well 
behaved, I agree.  It's up to the app to use no-decorations for 
functional, rather than purely aesthetic, purposes. 

> > talking about the case where there are no "normal" windows
> > on the screen.  Maybe I just closed all my apps, or maybe
> > I just switched to a clean workspace.  For keyboard people,
> > having focus go off into limbo just isn't very useful.  It
> > should go somewhere, and preferably somewhere that isn't
> > some invisible pseudo-window.  That leaves the desktop and
> > the panel(s).  And how-to-get-focus-right.txt basically says
> > the panel is "harder" to focus, so the desktop seems right.
> >    
>
> Saying that the focus needs to go somewhere doesn't make a whole lot
> of sense to me, actually.  I don't see that.  What does seem
> reasonable is that users have a trained expectation that something
> will be automatically focused for them.  Indeed, we provided the
> training in the case of many windows open; when the user closes one of
> their windows, we automatically focus one of the remaining ones for
> them.  Seems reasonable.  The logic you followed for desktop vs.
> panels makes sense too.
>
>  
>
> > I'm not trying to push the desktop as the focus target when
> > weird stuff happens, like no-initial-focus dialogs coming
> > on-screen.  Just this:
> >
> > if (NoNormalWindows && NothingElseWeird)
> >  FocusDesktop ();
> >    
>
> Okay, so when the current focus window becomes invalid (because it is
> minimized or destroyed or is hidden or is withdrawn or whatever),
> you're saying that we should try to focus the MRU window, otherwise
> the desktop window (otherwise the no-focus-window).  Makes sense, BUT:
>
> What about a window becoming invalid due to workspace switch?  If
> there is no (normal) window on the new workspace, should the desktop
> be focused?  Even if using sloppy focus?  (or only in sloppy focus
> when in keynav mode?)
>
> My guess at the workspace issue is the following: Since sloppy focus's
> focus-on-enter + don't-focus-on-exit behavior sets up the invariant
> that "the normal window containing the pointer is focused if there is
> one, otherwise the most recently used window has focus", and since
> we're effectively adding the desktop window at the very end of the MRU
> list in the special case of the focus window becoming invalid, it
> makes sense to do that not only for click-to-focus-mode but also for
> sloppy-focus-mode.  Thus, do everything you requested, and on the
> specific case of a workspace switch with an "empty" desktop for
> click-to-focus or sloppy-focus, focus the "desktop" window.  Sound
> reasonable?
The preceding paragraphs sound like the right behavior to me.  Seems 
like only in sort-of degenerate cases (like the  no-initial-focus modal 
dialog, eccch) do we end up with "nothing focussed" from the end-user 
POV.  This seems fine, since it means that in 'normal' situations the 
end-user is presented with a visible incidication of onscreen focus 
(implicitly requiring that there _is_ an onscreen focus).

regards

Bill