Re: proposal for a smarter behavior for raising windows on mouse click

[Jason Tackaberry <tack auc ca>]

On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 13:02, Martin Grimme wrote:
> From what I have heard, users don't want windows to be raised during:
> - drag and drop
> - selecting text
> - using the scrollbars

What users?  Certainly I'm in that category.  But I wonder if this
really is representative of the majority of GNOME users.

The trouble with trying to make operations do what the user is
_thinking_ is that you lead into things like "do this unless that or do
this if that other thing."  The result is a list of exceptions that
makes the user have to think "err, what's going to happen if I do this
operation _this_ time?"  This is not good usability.

The most obvious example of this is the Windows Explorer file
drag-and-drop.  It moves the file if it's on the same file system,
copies it if it's on a different file system or network, or creates a
shortcut if it's an EXE no matter what filesystem it's on (IIRC).  This
list of exceptions annoys me even still.

Of course the "to raise or not to raise" problem is significantly less
dangerous since you're not manipulating data, but from a basic usability
perspective, I believe it makes sense to avoid adding exceptions.

_I_ personally would like the behaviour you proposed a lot.  I agree
that it does what I'm thinking about 99% of the time.  But I wouldn't
make the claim that I'm a typical user either.  I'd certainly rejoice if
this were added as a gconf pref, however I do raise questions about its
merit from a usability perspective.

As always, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Cheers,
Jason.

-- 
Jason Tackaberry  ::  tack auc ca  :: 705-949-2301 x330
Academic Computing Support Specialist
Information Technology Services
Algoma University College  ::  www.auc.ca

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