The Dark Side Part 3: Stealing Focus
This will be a very brief update on the progress of my Windows foray: I just want to say, I'm on the train, and I'm trying to write this, but every 10-15 minutes a popup appears from the Wireless Network Connection do-dad on my "Taskbar." Unbenounced to me (I am not a touch typist, and need to look at the keyboard when I type), this takes over my mouse focus, and anything I type after that point misses the document and flies off somwehere into the ether. To be fair, the Mac does this from time to time too, and it's equally annoying on that platform. (No, that was not a train pun.) But the Mac does it less frequently, and more obviously, such that I rarely lose whole paragraphs of text I thought I was typing. So add one more to the count of things I have to turn off or on before I can be at peace with my Dell, and another to the list of nice things about the Mac. I have to say, the Mac is really well thought out and configured, straight out of the box.
And that, my friends, is why design matters.
And for the record, I have now discovered yet another program for accessing wireless networks. That makes a total of three -- count 'em, three -- programs vying for control of my wireless card: Quickset, by Dell; Intel PROSet/Wireless, by Intel; and the Wireless Internet Connection Control Panel built into Microsoft Windows XP. WTF?
And that, my friends, is why design matters.
And for the record, I have now discovered yet another program for accessing wireless networks. That makes a total of three -- count 'em, three -- programs vying for control of my wireless card: Quickset, by Dell; Intel PROSet/Wireless, by Intel; and the Wireless Internet Connection Control Panel built into Microsoft Windows XP. WTF?
Labels: TheDarkSide, Windows
This entry was posted
on Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 2:32 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
5:33 AMStealing focus can have very serious consequences. Whenever I install software for work, I document it. I've taken to documenting on a second computer, because I've lost count of the number of times I'm (touch) typing and a requester pops up, steals focus from whereever I was typing, beeps at me for typing keys that don't match its shortcuts but then grabs the space key and interprets it as the default action.
Pretty damned annoying when the default is ‘Yeah fine delete everything’. In my time, I've unwittingly dismissed error reports without having chance to read them, rolled-back half an hour of manual installation, and switched off antivirus software without realising. It's especially annoying when I just happened to be formatting a list, adding tabs and spaces and stuff. Which button did I just select in the focus-stealing lottery?
(Yes, ‘requester’ from the Amiga days. It avoids the problem of ‘dialog box’ being a faulty description.)
The easy way for GUI developers to avoid this problem is for buttons to be inactive for three seconds (or thereabouts) after the last user input. If the user continues typing then they're not going to be inadvertently agreeing to all sorts of mayhem. The hard way to fix it is to keep the requester itself hidden until the user stops typing for three seconds. Option #1 fixes my problem. #2 fixes yours as well.
A related problem with stealing focus is the ‘shy requester’. Windows that pop up behind its parent application. So you think ‘This application has become terminally ill. I shall euthanize it.’ It's even more ridiculous when the requester moded you in... You can't move the parent window until you dismiss the requester, but you can't dismiss the requester because you can't see it... because the parent window is in the way. It's French bureaucracy for computers!
--
An amusant for your amusance.
12:53 PM
This last scenario has happened to me on the Mac, actually (well, they all have in one form or another). I don't remember the details, but it happened when I was installing Final Cut (it may have been a crack I was testing that didn't go off so well). There's a popup that appears if your license is invalid, but it pops up behind the registration screen, while simultaneously disabling said screen. So unless you think to move the registration screen (which I finally did), you're at a complete loss as to why you're locked out of your app. You should see the looks on the faces of my Lab Assistants when this happens. Total bewilderment. Which, I'll admit, almost makes up for the intolerably stupid UI glitch.
Almost.
» Post a Comment