Re: set your application title

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

> > Actually it helps accessibility too, and as Havoc said there's no real
> > cost in doing so.
> 
> Could you please explain why it helps a11y ? I see you saying things
> about "this is good for a11y", "this is bad for a11y", and "this
> application isn't properly a11ied", but rarely explanations, on why it's
> good, bad or broken, and how it can be fixed.

I don't think there's too much explanation needed when something it good
and not broken...

but, in short, ATs see the desktop as a set of applications, and present
this info to the user.   Without ATs, most users get a lot of "implicit"
info about the apps on the desktop and they don't usually spend too much
time consciously thinking about what app is what or whether it's really
just a child process or several services cooperating or what-have-you.  

So there is a concept of an 'application' that's not tied exactly to a
'toplevel window' or 'process' or even something that was 'exec'ed'. 
Application designers have to give enough implicit or explicit info in
their UI design so that users see a unified "app" and understand which
parts go together, but this usually happens more-or-less unconsciously
on the part of the app designer.  

However these cues (mostly visual, usually) aren't always there for
users of assistive technologies.  Our AT infrastructure explicitly
organizes the components of an application UI into a hierarchy with a
"root" node that we call the application, it might have multiple
toplevel windows, etc.  So, what should we call this application?  In
some cases the actual name of the executable passed to the shell is
either inappropriate or just plain ugly.  We can scavenge the titlebar
of the toplevel if there's only one toplevel, but sometimes that's not
appropriate either (since titlebars don't always contain the application
name).  Asking apps to explicitly state their name in a way suitable for
presentation to the user (or translation!) is much better.

Did that answer your question?


-Bill

> Cheers
-- 
Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>