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mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

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Chris Muller-4

mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

Leaving this disabled more closely matches Windows, but it requires
clicking wherever you want to put keyboard focus. But clicking for
focus is invokes whatever selection where you clicked (even though you
only want to gain keyboard focus on the list) which could cause even a
modal pop-up if the text pane was dirty. Clumsy!

With the option to Enable this setting, merely pointing provides
immediate keyboard control to the widget under the hand, without
needing to click. That is real "point-and-click", because you point,
then you can "click" with any key not just on the mouse, but also the
keyboard, to manipulate the UI. Control is magnified under two
dimensions of input.

We all in this community set what we want for all preferences. Many
of the default settings specified in ReleaseBuilder are the opposite
of my personal settings, but the best choice for the defaults. This
is about the _default_ for Squeak, not our personal preference.

I think we've reached a time of such technical-diversity that don't we
need to care as much about emulating Windows XP. Squeak can do
better, and I think it should.

Mateusz Grotek

Re: [SPAM] [squeak-dev] mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

Bert Freudenberg

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Chris Muller-4

On 23.01.2014, at 05:27, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Leaving this disabled more closely matches Windows, but it requires
> clicking wherever you want to put keyboard focus. But clicking for
> focus is invokes whatever selection where you clicked (even though you
> only want to gain keyboard focus on the list) which could cause even a
> modal pop-up if the text pane was dirty. Clumsy!
>
> With the option to Enable this setting, merely pointing provides
> immediate keyboard control to the widget under the hand, without
> needing to click. That is real "point-and-click", because you point,
> then you can "click" with any key not just on the mouse, but also the
> keyboard, to manipulate the UI. Control is magnified under two
> dimensions of input.
>
> We all in this community set what we want for all preferences. Many
> of the default settings specified in ReleaseBuilder are the opposite
> of my personal settings, but the best choice for the defaults. This
> is about the _default_ for Squeak, not our personal preference.
>
> I think we've reached a time of such technical-diversity that don't we
> need to care as much about emulating Windows XP. Squeak can do
> better, and I think it should.

-1

It's not about emulating Windows XP, but click-to-focus simply won, on any platform. There are just a couple of X window managers that have point-to-focus. If you still want that, change the preference. The default should be what is most commonly used.

(We did change this a couple years back. It was for the better. Now your text input does not stop anymore if you knock the mouse pointer out of the way.)

- Bert -

smime.p7s (5K) Download Attachment

Colin Putney-3

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:
> On 23.01.2014, at 05:27, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> -1
>
> It's not about emulating Windows XP, but click-to-focus simply won, on any platform. There are just a couple of X window managers that have point-to-focus. If you still want that, change the preference. The default should be what is most commonly used.
>
> (We did change this a couple years back. It was for the better. Now your text input does not stop anymore if you knock the mouse pointer out of the way.)

Agreed.

-1

Eliot Miranda-2

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg

Hi Bert,

great news that there's proper support for focus in Morphic. I think we at Cadence will want to port the code to our application quite quickly. How can I find out what the changes are so as to isolate them and port them to our Newspeak/Newsqueak fork?

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 23.01.2014, at 05:27, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Leaving this disabled more closely matches Windows, but it requires
> clicking wherever you want to put keyboard focus. But clicking for
> focus is invokes whatever selection where you clicked (even though you
> only want to gain keyboard focus on the list) which could cause even a
> modal pop-up if the text pane was dirty. Clumsy!
>
> With the option to Enable this setting, merely pointing provides
> immediate keyboard control to the widget under the hand, without
> needing to click. That is real "point-and-click", because you point,
> then you can "click" with any key not just on the mouse, but also the
> keyboard, to manipulate the UI. Control is magnified under two
> dimensions of input.
>
> We all in this community set what we want for all preferences. Many
> of the default settings specified in ReleaseBuilder are the opposite
> of my personal settings, but the best choice for the defaults. This
> is about the _default_ for Squeak, not our personal preference.
>
> I think we've reached a time of such technical-diversity that don't we
> need to care as much about emulating Windows XP. Squeak can do
> better, and I think it should.

-1

It's not about emulating Windows XP, but click-to-focus simply won, on any platform. There are just a couple of X window managers that have point-to-focus. If you still want that, change the preference. The default should be what is most commonly used.

(We did change this a couple years back. It was for the better. Now your text input does not stop anymore if you knock the mouse pointer out of the way.)

- Bert -

--
best,

Eliot

Casey Ransberger-2

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Chris Muller-4

In most cases, I'd say "do whatever most new users will expect."

In this particular case, I dislike click to focus so very much that I'm going to throw an enthusiastic +1 to Chris' suggestion. Even if we lose;)

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

Leaving this disabled more closely matches Windows, but it requires
clicking wherever you want to put keyboard focus. But clicking for
focus is invokes whatever selection where you clicked (even though you
only want to gain keyboard focus on the list) which could cause even a
modal pop-up if the text pane was dirty. Clumsy!

With the option to Enable this setting, merely pointing provides
immediate keyboard control to the widget under the hand, without
needing to click. That is real "point-and-click", because you point,
then you can "click" with any key not just on the mouse, but also the
keyboard, to manipulate the UI. Control is magnified under two
dimensions of input.

We all in this community set what we want for all preferences. Many
of the default settings specified in ReleaseBuilder are the opposite
of my personal settings, but the best choice for the defaults. This
is about the _default_ for Squeak, not our personal preference.

I think we've reached a time of such technical-diversity that don't we
need to care as much about emulating Windows XP. Squeak can do
better, and I think it should.

Sean P. DeNigris

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

Administrator

In reply to this post by Bert Freudenberg

Bert Freudenberg wrote

> But clicking for
> focus is invokes whatever selection where you clicked (even though you
> only want to gain keyboard focus on the list) which could cause even a
> modal pop-up if the text pane was dirty. Clumsy!
>

This is a separate problem. IMHO, Mac Finder has the correct way to handle clicking in a list without focus.
Open a Mac Finder window and select several items. Then open another Finder window. You'll see the selection of the original window get paler (which is a great piece of visual feedback; I'm often fooled because I'm looking at a browser window list pane and the blue selection makes me think I can scroll with the arrow keys). Then, click anywhere in the Finder list with the selection. A mouse down does nothing (maybe Squeak's pre-selection would be even better here) unless you start dragging (which does what you'd expect), but on mouse up, all it does is give the list focus, preserving the selection.

Regarding the question at hand, I think point-to-focus would be much more useful if windows made an effort to open under the active hand, but agree that for new users, click-to-focus will be easier on their muscle memory. Let's keep their brainpower for the blue plane :)

Cheers,
Sean

Bert Freudenberg

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Eliot Miranda-2

On 23.01.2014, at 23:27, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Bert,
>
> great news that there's proper support for focus in Morphic. I think we at Cadence will want to port the code to our application quite quickly. How can I find out what the changes are so as to isolate them and port them to our Newspeak/Newsqueak fork?

Not sure if that's tongue-in-cheek?

The current default behavior is that within the active window, the panel with the mouse has the focus. But at least if you move the mouse out of the window, the focus still stays with the last panel.

The *proper* support you're looking for would not even have move-to-focus in the window, but only change focus by clicking. I don't think we have that, by preference or otherwise.

- Bert -

smime.p7s (5K) Download Attachment

Eliot Miranda-2

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 23.01.2014, at 23:27, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Bert,
>
> great news that there's proper support for focus in Morphic. I think we at Cadence will want to port the code to our application quite quickly. How can I find out what the changes are so as to isolate them and port them to our Newspeak/Newsqueak fork?

Not sure if that's tongue-in-cheek?

The current default behavior is that within the active window, the panel with the mouse has the focus. But at least if you move the mouse out of the window, the focus still stays with the last panel.

The *proper* support you're looking for would not even have move-to-focus in the window, but only change focus by clicking. I don't think we have that, by preference or otherwise.

Ah. Indeed Vassili just indicated this to me privately. As usual a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I'm horribly ignorant here. I wasn't being tongue in cheek, but I should have bitten my tongue ;-)

Thanks for the clarification.

- Bert -

--
best,

Eliot

Chris Muller-3

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Sean P. DeNigris

> This is a separate problem. IMHO, Mac Finder has the correct way to handle
> clicking in a list without focus.
> Open a Mac Finder window and select several items. Then open another Finder
> window. You'll see the selection of the original window get paler (which is
> a great piece of visual feedback; I'm often fooled because I'm looking at a
> browser window list pane and the blue selection makes me think I can scroll
> with the arrow keys). Then, click anywhere in the Finder list with the
> selection. A mouse down does nothing (maybe Squeak's pre-selection would be
> even better here) unless you start dragging (which does what you'd expect),
> but on mouse up, all it does is give the list focus, preserving the
> selection.

I'm totally unfamiliar with Apple but resolving the ambiguity between
gaining focus and activating the underlying widget would be a big
improvement over what Squeak and Windows XP does.

> Regarding the question at hand, I think point-to-focus would be much more
> useful if windows made an effort to open under the active hand, but agree

They actually do for modal popups, thank goodness.

> that for new users, click-to-focus will be easier on their muscle memory.
> Let's keep their brainpower for the blue plane :)

You're vote don't count here, sorry. :) But keeping brainpower is
precisely my reason for wanting to change it -- I see people
constantly "fighting" the UI because they're activating stuff they
don't want to activate, which suddenly puts them in a mode of thinking
about the UI and not the domain. When I see it, I just shake my
head...

Chris Muller-3

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Colin Putney-3

>> It's not about emulating Windows XP, but click-to-focus simply won, on any platform. There are just a couple of X window managers that have point-to-focus. If you still want that, change the preference. The default should be what is most commonly used.

I've only ever used Gnome, KDE and, now, Unity. They all have it but,
you're right, it's off by default. I was wondering, though, whether
that's because they think that's the best choice, or because they had
the same conversation we're having right now, i.e., "Windows won, so
we better do what Windows did."

>> (We did change this a couple years back. It was for the better. Now your text input does not stop anymore if you knock the mouse pointer out of the way.)

If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence. By
contrast, requiring click for focus demands again, and again,
constantly, all day, every day.

Now, the folks who want to use their USB mouse from the dashboard of
their car, while they're driving... You're right, they'd be
innocently typing in a text box, but as soon as they slam on their
brakes to avoid flying off the cliff just ahead, yes, the mouse would
slide and we have a use-case for unintended focus-loss. How
irritating that would be. :)

I think the real issue is "expectations" like you said. But, we've
also seen that "Think Different" can be successful too..

> Agreed.
>
> -1

timrowledge

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

On 23-01-2014, at 5:47 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
> If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
> getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence.

Actually I suspect otherwise. I’ve plenty of experience of a mouse cable causing it to drift away from where it ought to be, or simply knocking it.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: DUL: Delete Utility Library

Ron Teitelbaum

RE: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

> tim Rowledge
>
>
> On 23-01-2014, at 5:47 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
> > getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence.
>
> Actually I suspect otherwise. I've plenty of experience of a mouse cable
causing
> it to drift away from where it ought to be, or simply knocking it.

+1 happens all the time. I had to write code that centers the mouse when
the app starts so it would be on the screen, and code to move the mouse away
from menus when they are active just so that I can properly support menu
keys. Seems like I'm always hacking the mouse to support simple behaviors.

>
>
> tim

timfelgentreff

RE: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by Chris Muller-4

Click-to-focus annoys me so much that it was one of the reasons I
switched from Mac to Linux on my MacBook back when I still had one.
That being said, I'm fine with it being a preference that I can change
(an option Mac OS did not have.)

My reason for setting click-to-focus by default would be that in my
experience with undergrad students exposed to Squeak in the last few
years, focus-follows-mouse has been a major issue for many. People who
know and want focus-follows-mouse tend to take a look if they can
enable it. I found that people who do not know there are different
focus behaviors than "what Windows/Mac/Unity does" don't look.

So, while I won't use it, in the interest of keeping the entry hurdle
low, I support switching to click-to-focus by default.

cheers
-Tim From: Ron Teitelbaum
Sent: 24/01/2014 04:18
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list; [hidden email]
Subject: RE: [squeak-dev] mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

> tim Rowledge
>
>
> On 23-01-2014, at 5:47 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
> > getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence.
>
> Actually I suspect otherwise. I've plenty of experience of a mouse cable
causing
> it to drift away from where it ought to be, or simply knocking it.

+1 happens all the time. I had to write code that centers the mouse when
the app starts so it would be on the screen, and code to move the mouse away
from menus when they are active just so that I can properly support menu
keys. Seems like I'm always hacking the mouse to support simple behaviors.

>
>
> tim

Karl Ramberg

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

I do not like mouseOverForKeyboardFocus verymuch.

It's to easy to lose the keyboard focus and then lose consentration.

Cheers,

Karl

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:00 AM, Tim Felgentreff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Click-to-focus annoys me so much that it was one of the reasons I
switched from Mac to Linux on my MacBook back when I still had one.
That being said, I'm fine with it being a preference that I can change
(an option Mac OS did not have.)

My reason for setting click-to-focus by default would be that in my
experience with undergrad students exposed to Squeak in the last few
years, focus-follows-mouse has been a major issue for many. People who
know and want focus-follows-mouse tend to take a look if they can
enable it. I found that people who do not know there are different
focus behaviors than "what Windows/Mac/Unity does" don't look.

So, while I won't use it, in the interest of keeping the entry hurdle
low, I support switching to click-to-focus by default.

cheers
-Tim From: Ron Teitelbaum
Sent: 24/01/2014 04:18
To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list; [hidden email]
Subject: RE: [squeak-dev] mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

> tim Rowledge
>
>
> On 23-01-2014, at 5:47 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
> > getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence.
>
> Actually I suspect otherwise. I've plenty of experience of a mouse cable
causing
> it to drift away from where it ought to be, or simply knocking it.

+1 happens all the time. I had to write code that centers the mouse when
the app starts so it would be on the screen, and code to move the mouse away
from menus when they are active just so that I can properly support menu
keys. Seems like I'm always hacking the mouse to support simple behaviors.

>
>
> tim

Casey Ransberger-2

Re: mouseOverForKeyboardFocus default for 4.5

In reply to this post by timrowledge

Below

> On Jan 23, 2014, at 6:38 PM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>
>> On 23-01-2014, at 5:47 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> If hands are typing on the keyboard, the mouse is off to the side, so
>> getting accidentally bumped would be pretty rare occurrence.
>
> Actually I suspect otherwise. I’ve plenty of experience of a mouse cable causing it to drift away from where it ought to be, or simply knocking it.
>
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Strange OpCodes: DUL: Delete Utility Library

What's a mouse? My laptop has a trackpad right next where my palm goes and I bump it all the time when I type.

Still though, "Windows won" is a funny way to think about things at this point in time, I suspect. Tablets won, AFAICT, and Microsoft is struggling to get a foothold outside of the enterprise. Which, I uh probably shouldn't say this close to Redmond if I want to live a long life, but oh well.

Thought experiment: since tablets won, should we throw out our mice? :)