[Usability] Re: Error dialogs (among others?) and focus stealing prevention

[Rob Adams <readams readams net>]

But with a modal dialog a very interesting question is raised -- if you 
don't focus it, what do you focus?  It makes no sense to leave the 
parent application focused, since it won't accept input. The modal 
dialog needs to be kept stacked above the parent window, so its very 
likely that it will be covering up whatever input element you were 
typing into anyway.  So the user would be left with only one option: use 
the mouse to focus the dialog.

Clearly I'm not talking here about modal dialogs launched by a different 
application -- if you're typing into a terminal, you don't want an error 
message from evolution or whatever popping up in front of you.

-Rob

Elijah Newren wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:27:11 -0700, Rob Adams <readams readams net> wrote:
>  
>
> > I don't think it's a good idea to try to prevent an application from
> > stealing focus from itself.  Apps should resolve any such usability
> > problems by themselves.
> >
> > In particular, a new modal child window, such as most error dialogs,
> > should always get focus.  It simply doesn't make sense that it wouldn't.
> >    
>
> I disagree.  If a new modal child window is unexpected, then the
> window can be accidentally dismissed before the user gets a chance to
> read it if the user happens to be typing at the time it appears. 
> That's bad.
>
> I think Havoc was right that the overall guiding principal is
> unexpected windows should not be focused.  Only windows (including
> error dialogs) that are launched as a result of user interaction, and
> only those those that are mapped before further interaction (since
> some do only appear after a delay, such as a web browser trying to
> load a web page from a site that is down) should take focus.
>
> Elijah
>
>