raise window on-click

Rob Park rbpark at ualberta.ca
Tue Nov 25 03:48:01 UTC 2003


Merc wrote:
> I do agree with you that it should be an option.  I must say though that
> this change delighted me, and is Correct (tm). ;-)

Ugh, this drives me nuts. I use focus-follows-mouse because I like being 
able to type into whatever window I'm pointing at, WITHOUT having to 
click it. It's just "less work" from a "I want to change focus to that 
other window"-standpoint. I don't often want to raise the window that's 
focused, because I like having a gaim conversation window on top of a 
maximized mozilla window (so I can still read the gaim window, even if 
I'm typing into a web form or something). BUT, sometimes I DO want to 
raise the window, and it's *so* much easier to be able to click anywhere 
than to be restricted to the title bar. I find it very annoying that I 
have to click in that one tiny little spot.

I don't know how to explain it, it just makes sense to me that whatever 
I click on ought to be given focus and raised, but whatever I point at 
without clicking on ought to simply be given focus. There seems to be a 
bug where if I move change workspaces too quickly, the newly pointed-at 
window won't get the focus, and clicking on it won't give it focus, I 
actually have to go to the trouble of moving my mouse off the window and 
then back on, which is very tiresom since this happens CONSTANTLY. Try 
it yourself: put one window on a virtual desktop, change to a different 
desktop, then change back by clicking on the pager (make sure you click 
outside of the window's outline), and then move your mouse over that 
window, as fast as you can. If you did it right, that window won't have 
focus. And clicking on it won't give it focus. Clicking on the title bar 
will, but that's no less annoying. For the most part, you have to move 
the mouse off, then back on, to give it focus.

Actually, now that I'm ranting about it anyway, GNOME really needs a 
"focus strictly under mouse" mode, not "focus follows mouse, poorly" as 
is currently implemented. There's nothing I hate more than writing an 
email, and having some error dialog box pop up, but disappear too 
quickly to read because I was typing, it stole my focus, and I pressed 
the space bar, which selected the default action. That dialog box, 
whatever it was, just did something that I might not have wanted it to 
do, and it might be irreversible, and I might never know what it was. 
That drives me nuts.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the window I'm pointing at 
should ALWAYS have focus, and the WM should never give focus to any 
other window, unless I point at it specifically, no matter how badly 
that other window may want the focus.

Does that make sense?





More information about the fedora-list mailing list