[571] in Athena User Interface
Re: No focus for newly-launched apps
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Wed Jan 3 18:35:22 2001
Message-Id: <200101032335.SAA16375@multics.mit.edu>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
cc: aui@MIT.EDU, tibbetts@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 03 Jan 2001 18:10:26 EST."
<200101032310.SAA31134@equal-rites.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 18:35:17 -0500
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
On 1/3 Greg wrote:
> I've noticed that when you launch an xterm or whatever, it doesn't get
> the focus, which is both unexpected and a departure from
> MacOS/Windows. Has anyone thought about this?
I think that the MacOS/Windows behavior is wrong in our situation
because the users do not get feedback that an application is starting.
Users will (for applications like Star Office that take a long time to
start) tend to go off and do something else (e.g. write email) while
waiting for applications to start. If the application grabs focus when
it first puts a window up, some of the user's input (e.g. their
intended email message body) will end up in the new application.
This may cause unexpected behavior on the part of the newly started
application. It will almost certainly annoy users. And it will not be
obvious to users that they can turn it off, or where to do so.
I don't think that we should do this, it will not benefit the users.
tibbetts.
-*- http://www.mit.edu/~tibbetts -*- finger tibbetts@monk.mit.edu -*-
