[Usability]The whole panel focus/keynav thing

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Yes, I'm sure you hoped it had just gone away for good :)  But with the
final UI freeze looming fast, we need to nail the whole issue about
panel keynav, and showing panel focus.  

We know you didn't like what we did last time, so here's our new
proposal, which, unless there are any obvious issues or better ideas
that haven't already been shouted down in previous discussions, we'll be
unleashing Padraig on to implement anytime soon...

Executive summary: by default, you won't notice anything different from
what currently happens ("currently" meaning "since the highlighting was
removed again", that is!). Except that when they're focused, you'll get
a normal focus indicator around some applets that don't currently have
them.

The details:

1) The panel background will no longer be focusable, except when there
are no objects on it.  Instead, focusing a panel will always give focus
to an object *on* the panel.

2) By default, the panel background will not highlight when an object on
the panel has focus.  Well actually, it will, but the default will be to
use the same colour as the panel background, so you won't notice--
honest :)  This means that people who *need* the panel highlight can
easily get it thematically, by changing the panel background highlight
colour.  Panels with pixmap backgrounds will be unaffected, their
backgrounds won't highlight regardless.

3) To pop up the panel right-click menu, instead of focusing the panel
background (which won't be possible any more) and pressing Shift-F10,
there will be an additional keyboard shortcut available, probably
something like Ctrl-F10 or Alt-F10, that pops up the panel menu when any
object on the panel has focus.  (Or when the panel background has focus,
if the panel is empty).

4) Applets: we may have to shave a pixel or two off the heights of some
applets to leave room to show a discernable focus indicator.  However,
some of them already seem to have some padding around them, so hopefully
we'll be able to minimise the amount of shaving we need to do :)  If we
can still make the active area extend right to the edge of the screen
for applets on edge panels, we will*.  But usability-wise it's slightly
less important that this works for applets anyway, as in many cases
there's not much to gain by just clicking on an applet-- you often need
to click on a particular control or area inside the applet instead, so
having the edge of the screen available as a big target doesn't really
improve matters there.

That is all... suggestions/objections to be filed in writing ASAP  :o)

Cheeri,
Calum.

* Although this already seems to be broken for non-menu panels (e.g. the
window list, which goes right up to the top of the screen if you stick
it on the menu panel, but not right down to the bottom when it's on the
bottom edge panel).

-- 
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