FC5: first impressions

[Dimi Paun]

On Sun, 2006-03-26 at 14:20 +0000, Bill Crawford wrote:
>  True enough, but the focus stealing prevention is something that's
> been needed for a long time. 

Not for me, it hasn't. I know for sure I don't want it.
The typing-the-root-password-in-the-newly-opened-im-client
scenario doesn't keep me up at night. In fact, it's a 
non-issue for me.

But more importantly, I don't understand why people are
harping on the terminal use case. My particular complaint
applies to the entire desktop -- when I start any app (say
from the GNOME menu), it does not get the focus! It is
started in the background with a flashing button in the
task bar.

This behavior simply does the wrong thing for me in more than
90% of the time. In fact, I can't remember the last time
that I wanted to "continue my work" between when I clicked
on an icon, and the app started. This seems to be a dorky
fix for some apps taking to long to start. Let's make them
start faster, that what people want anyway.

To add insult to injury, this behavior is making life a lot
worse for people (like me) that try to avoid (as much as
possible) the use of the mouse.

If I start an app, it means that I want to use it _now_.
Don't make me ask for it 2-3 times. In the unlikely case
when I don't, a quick Alt-TAB solves the problem. If this
is still not obvious to people, here's a quick comparison:
  Focus Stealing:
    -- >90% of time it does the right thing
    -- <10% the fix is a sub-second Alt-TAB, no mouse
  Manual Focus
    -- >90% you have to use >1sec to gain the focus with the mouse
    -- <10% you don't have to do anything

If you still prefer the manual focus, all power to you, but
that shouldn't be the default behavior. Let's just stick to
the principle of least surprise here folks, we would make a
lot of people happy.

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.