Wednesday, November 09, 2005
User Interface Annoyance
Okay, so here's a stupid question. How many of you hate when an application starts up or opens a new window, the focus is taken away from the current window that you may happen to be using? That is, you start up an application that takes a few seconds to start up, so you switch to another, start typing in your password (say)--then suddenly half your password is in the URL bar of a browser window?
Here's what I don't get. This is an easy thing to fix: if the user starts an application up, set a flag to indicate that it's the current frontmost application. But if the user then switches to another application, force the front window of the application being launched to just behind the current window.
Simple. Since each window has to be associated with the current application in the window manager of every windowing operating system out there, it's easy to detect if the user--after starting an application--then does something that sends events to the current focus of a currently running application. If such an event (a keyboard or mouse event) occurs, then change the current frontmost application flag to the application you just screwed around with. Then when an application wants to open a front-most window, have that window appear just behind the window the user is currently using.
Of course there should be some exceptions: an alert that pops up probably should go frontmost even if the application is not--but such notifications should be reserved for something disasterous or for a user-set alarm.
But by and large, it's a pain in the neck every time an application opens up a new window, that process grabs focus from the user. This makes the entire operation no longer a user-centric operation, but a computer centric one.
And anything that is not user centric is just fucking annoying. ¶ 12:28 PM
Here's what I don't get. This is an easy thing to fix: if the user starts an application up, set a flag to indicate that it's the current frontmost application. But if the user then switches to another application, force the front window of the application being launched to just behind the current window.
Simple. Since each window has to be associated with the current application in the window manager of every windowing operating system out there, it's easy to detect if the user--after starting an application--then does something that sends events to the current focus of a currently running application. If such an event (a keyboard or mouse event) occurs, then change the current frontmost application flag to the application you just screwed around with. Then when an application wants to open a front-most window, have that window appear just behind the window the user is currently using.
Of course there should be some exceptions: an alert that pops up probably should go frontmost even if the application is not--but such notifications should be reserved for something disasterous or for a user-set alarm.
But by and large, it's a pain in the neck every time an application opens up a new window, that process grabs focus from the user. This makes the entire operation no longer a user-centric operation, but a computer centric one.
And anything that is not user centric is just fucking annoying. ¶ 12:28 PM
