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

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:06:06 -0700, Karim Nassar <karim nassar nau edu> wrote:
> If user is typing, and we don't focus the dialog (keeping focus on last
> window) user can finish the sentence. Even if the dialog accidentally
> covers up the work, the last few keystrokes end up at the intended
> target avoiding the accidental dismissal issue. IMHO this would be a
> Good Thing. One solution for the covered up work would be some sort of
> transparent dialogs as described in "The Humane Interface".

Or, when transparency is not available (like in X right now), let the
application define a "user focus" area that dialogs could avoid when
popping up. The focus area could be the area right (or left) from the
most recently typed text with consideration to the height of the text
in the case of a text editor, or a widget or group of widgets.

This way, you'd get the dialog where you won't miss it, but it
wouldn't kill your train of thought or stop you from finishing your
current task.

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:39:48 -0700, Rob Adams <readams readams net> wrote:
> > 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.

This would work for these too.

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi