solution?

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Eric Dunbar 

| On 12/19/05, Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen at canonical.com> wrote:
| > * Eric Dunbar
| >
| > | On 12/19/05, Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen at canonical.com> wrote:
| > | > * Eric Dunbar
| > | It is quite possible to keep focus-follows-mouse with a fixed menu
| > | bar. It combines the undisputed advantage of using fixed targets with
| > | the advantage offered by focus-follows-mouse.
| >
| > Apart from the horrendous way it's done in MOSX where menu focus isn't
| > the same as keyboard focus, I don't see how you can do that?
|
| I think we're talking about different things here. I thought
| focus-follows-mouse was when you had the window auto-focused if the
| mouse was on it.

yes.

| I've seen experiment where people would do that (mouse over brings
| window to front). I never liked it (nor did I like it on
| menu-in-window systems).

raising the window is an entirely different matter, and doesn't have
anything to do with what window is focused.

[...]

| > | Unfortunately, that forces one to go to the single application
| > | paradigm, and, sometimes you lose the menu bar (which is Ok for
| > | basic web browsing or word processing but not for real work).
| >
| > I don't see how I'm forced to that, I use keyboard shortcuts, and I
| > use virtual desktops.  Note also that even I like to maximise screen
| > estate, that does not mean I maximise my applications.  I seldom run
| > my terminals in full-screen, for instance.
|
| Again, I think we're thinking different things.

Apparently.  You are thinking «removing the menu bar» implies
«full-screen mode».  In the apps where I care, I can turn off the menu
bar without going into a full-screen mode.  (It's just (menu-bar-mode
nil) in .emacs for emacs and 'Show Menu=0' in opera6.ini for Opera.
I've hacked firefox similarly to have the address bar besides the menu
entries.)

| Full screen mode dramatically reduces visual clutter on Linux/Windows
| and, adds to usable screen real-estate... a premium on laptops and
| non-monster screens :-(. In full screen mode you eliminate the taskbar
| switcher, the application launcher and the windowbar... That's 10-20%
| of the screen's height regained on the standard 1024*768 that most
| computers run in (a LOT of space).
|
| When I go full-screen with Windows/Linux, often-times I lose the menu
| bar. This makes an app less functional. All important functionality
| should be accessible within one or two mouse clicks. Users shouldn't
| have to use the keyboard, except to enter text (not to issue
| commands).

They shouldn't have to, but they should be able to.  Not having
keyboard shortcuts for common tasks is a major pain and it's a lot
harder to actually hit a small icon or a menu than hitting the right
keys on the keyboard.  Even though Jeff's mum might not want keyboard
shortcuts particularly much, my mum does. :-)

| Question: when you speak of full screen do you mean that the task
| switcher and windowbar are still visible when you've just "maximised"
| the application's window? I'm thinking of F11 fullscreen which
| eliminates all the extraneous junk. The mode where you've got no task
| switcher, no windowbar (useless waste of space), no application
| launcher.

I don't use full-screen, but I have turned off menus in emacs and
opera, for instance.  The window bar is the first thing I remove when
I do a fresh install, so I haven't seen that on this machine for more
than a year.  The top bar is there always, since I use it a lot
(deskbar-applet, as well as calendar, weather applet,
cpu/memory/network load, etc).

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen                                                        ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are      : :' :
                                                                      `. `' 
                                                                        `-