VanLUG Email Archive
Brian Bray (brianbr@ibm.net)
Mon, 25 Jan 1999 23:47:38 -0800
Brian Edmonds wrote:
>
> Roberto Pavan <rpavan@physics.ubc.ca> writes:
> > I prefer ClickToFocus because I usually get annoyed at having the
> > cursor sitting in the window, blocking something that I'm trying to
> > look at.
>
> This is why I really like SloppyFocus in fvwm. It's like focus follows
> mouse except that the focus only changes when the mouse is moved to an
> unfocused window that is set non-ClickToFocus. So moving it into the
> background leaves the focus unchanged. Ditto for xclock and friends,
> since I've set them all to ClickToFocus.
>
In my opinion, mouse focus is one of the (many) reasons why the UNIX
world is not known for good GUI's and is full of people who swear by
character based interfaces.
If you watch *expert* users of good GUI apps, their hands hardly ever
leave the keyboard. Mousing around is great for exploring the
interface, or for rare operations, but it's much slower than using the
keyboard for things you do all the time.
When the mouse becomes necessary and not just an additional way to do
something, then frequent users are going to prefer a faster interface,
even if it's uglier and less fully featured.
Focus follows mouse works just fine if you are using X just to multiplex
xterm's, but it prevents really productive use of true GUI apps.
-Brian
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon 25 Jan 1999 - 23:49:54 PST