[Tfug] Speaking of desktops (little 'd')...

[Bexley Hall]

--- On Mon, 11/10/08, John Gruenenfelder <johng at as.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 07:46:31PM -0800, Bexley Hall wrote:
> >What are the "inexcusable sins" encountered in current
> >"user interfaces" (sorry for the imprecision but intend that
> >to encompass all sorts of interactive devices).
> >
> >E.g., highest on my Piss List is "never steal the focus".
> >*I* should decide what I am interacting with, not "the
> >machine".
> >
> >Aside from that, other "PC desktop" (windowed environments)
> >issues that I'm undecided about include things like
> >- focus follows cursor (in some cases, I like this; at
> >  other times, it is a nuisance.  Maybe the application
> >  should convey this to the window manager as a 'preference'?)
> >- auto raise when in focus (I consider this A Bad Idea in
> >  almost all circumstances)
> >
> >I also dislike having menus, toolbars, etc. *in* the application
> >windows.  I liked the way the old MacOS handled this -- though
> >I suspect that it has gone away in OS X (?)
> >
> >But, what about the other "channels" used to convey information
> >to the user.  E.g., should any app be able to "make noise"
> >whenever it wants?  Or, should the noises that it is allowed to
> >make be tied to where the user's focus resides?  Etc.
> 
> Ooohh, this is getting close to religious war territory. 
> :)

<grin> That's true of *ANYTHING* related to user interfaces!  :>

> Problem is, even a term like "inexcusable sin" is variable 
> depending on the user.

Yes.  I was trying to convey:  what "things" irritate you
consistently enough that, if you *could*, you would EXCISE
(exorcise?) from the interface completely.

> My desktop preferences seem almost opposite from
> what you prefer.
> 
> I like "focus on map" as default, but an app
> should not otherwise grab focus.

Hmmm... note that a window can be mapped/unmapped at many times
during its life.  Are you intending this to mean all such
times or just when it is initially created?

> I always turn on focus follows cursor *and* auto-raise
> (500ms delay).  As for

<frown>  I dislike delays in the user interface.  After about
300ms, people tend to get fidgetty -- "why isn't the thing
responding to me?".  Deliberately adding a delay in order to
implement a "feature" seems "forced" to me  :-/

> noise, I prefer to let apps make all the noise they like
> since it tends to be made in response to input (i.e. play
> this song) or to signal a message or error.

Hmmm... perhaps the PC world is a bad example -- since most
apps don't seem to want to "talk" unless you are talking
*to* them (exception being things like music players).

Do you like/prefer having incoming mail "announced"?
Should "out of paper" be an audio annuciator (instead
of a distraction on the screen)?

What if you had a stock ticker with "speech" output... should
it be babbling incessantly in the background?  Or, perhaps,
configured to just announce changes in particular stocks of
interest to you?  (I'm just making up imaginary apps that I
can imagine "wanting to 'talk' to you" even though you are
not actively "focused" on them)

> My personal WM sin choices are the window manager stealing
> *all* focus except for some supposedly critical error dialog
> on the screen.  This is mostly directed at Windows where this
> sort of behavior is common.

I think it is a consequence of the API exposing this ability
to the application.  E.g., HP was notorious for popping up
dialogs like this just to tell you your printer is out of paper.

*Should* this be available to an application writer?  I.e.,
this comes back to the question I posed in previous message:
is there *ever* a time when the system should grab the server?
And, now I ask, should an *application* be able to do this
(knowing that developers are free to do whatever they want to
do with the API you make available to them -- regardless of
how stupid it may seem)?

> In my experience, X WMs almost always allow you to focus some 
> other window and often move other
> windows beneath the modal dialog currently displayed.

Yes.  One thing I *like* in a WM is the ability to operate on
windows without altering the stacking order (hence my dislike
for "raise on focus").  Too often, I don't have enough real estate
and just need to nudge an overlayed window over a little bit to
be able to see something that is currently obscured.

> The other big annoyance is small unresizable windows.  This
> is *very* common with Windows where they delight in presenting 
> a 200x100 dialog with about ten pages of text in it, or some 20
> column table you have to scroll through.  This
> annoyance does occur in X too, but less frequently.

Is there any reason that all windows shouldn't be resizable?
Even if the default behaviour is to just evenly pad the window's
contents with blank space?

> Also, it's an app decision, not a WM decision, though I suppose 
> the WM could override it in some cases.

I think some of this could be a problem with the WM's place in the
interface wrt the applications.  I.e., some things the application 
would probably have to export to the WM ("policy") and let the
WM implement/enforce on its behalf.

In terms of *applications*, my biggest peeve is applications
asking me a question -- and then promptly forgetting my
response (*preference*!) when they *next* ask the same
question...