barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) (03/10/88)
In article <7602@apple.Apple.Com> lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein) writes: |The Apple human interface guidelines say that moving the mouse with the |button up is not supposed to do anything (such as activating a window), |except possibly changing the cursor shape. It requires an explicit click on |the button to activate a window. | |It seems to me that the mouse can get moved accidentally while typing, and |that would cause windows to be activated. For me (a long-time Mac user), |this would take some getting use to, but I can see how some people would |prefer in order to reduce the number of clicks. for comparison, Sunview will send keyboard inputs to the window that is under the mouse cursor (unless the click-to-type option is used). The fact that the mouse automatically activates the window typically doesn't cause problems, because the window receiving input doesn't automatically pop to the top of the stack. (Using the click-to-type option, the user must click a mouse button before changing the focus of the keyboard input.) I have briefly used systems where the active window was always on top of the stack. Doesn't this get in the way at times? For instance, I may have three windows open at once An editor Another window doing mail or reading manuals a compile window. typically the compile window is a large size, but under the other two windows. I usually do some edits, and reading the manual pages, etc. then I move the mouse to the portion of the compile window and type "!m" - make the program or "!r" to run the program. If that window kept popping to the top of the stack, I would be upset because I have to keep putting it back to the proper place it was. I would only look at it if I made an error (which is very rare :-) :-). This would be even more irritating if I had seven windows open at once, and I wanted the compile window to be number 6 on the stack (i.e. above 7 but under 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). I can see on a small screen, where you don't have much room, pulling the active window to the top makes sense. But with a large screen and 3-10 windows open at once, this would be irritating to me. Comments? -- Bruce G. Barnett <barnett@ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett@steinmetz.UUCP> uunet!steinmetz!barnett
steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele) (03/11/88)
Bruce G. Barnett (barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com) writes: >I have briefly used systems where the active window was always on top of the >stack. Doesn't this get in the way at times? Not as much (under the Mac OS) as it would on a Unix system. The Mac user interface is primarily mouse driver -- use a mouse to move or delete files, choose commands, change printer destinations, etc. There isn't much use in having keystrokes go to a partially hidden window, because keystrokes aren't used for anything (much) except straight text entry. On UNIX systems -- even all the UNIX systems I've used that put windows on top of UNIX -- you interact on a semantic level by means of the keyboard, and you need several shell windows to interact with different parts of the underlying system (shells in different current working directories, commands that take so long to finish that you want to do talk to another process while they're going on). When semantic information is carried by mouse activity, redirecting keystrokes doesn't buy you as much. I keep X and Suntools set up in key->window-under-mouse mode, not Mac emulation mode (swin -c or f.focus), but the only times I wish my Mac could act that way are when I'm running terminal emulators with multiple windows onto a UNIX system (uw; NCSA Telnet), or when I'm running a command line interface with multiple windows (MPW). Of course, this just changes the question into "Wouldn't it be nicer to be able to click in a window to perform some action without bringing it to the front [and wouldn't THIS be easier if the Mac weren't stuck with just one button :-]," and the answer is that all this really depends on window update time. If your windows have cached bitmaps or are tied to applications that can redraw them virtuinstantaneously, having the window come to the front isn't as inconvenient as it is if you're running, say, Smalltalk on a 2Meg Sun-2. It's not necessarily even an extra click, as you can use the same click both for window activation and operation (e.g.: the Macintosh Finder). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oliver Steele ...!uunet!mcnc!unc!steele steele@cs.unc.edu "A sea urchin is the best way to comb the inside of a hairy tube." -- Peter Wolfenden