Re: Keyboard usage on some Gnome windows not working

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 10 Oct 2005, at 18:16, Matthew Thomas wrote:

> Unfortunately, GNOME has yet to make a clear distinction between  
> dialogs
> and windows, and this causes subconscious confusion about how they  
> work.

Yes, that's certainly still an issue too, although it doesn't really  
alter the fact that pressing Esc, according to the HIG, is still only  
supposed to dismiss a window (in the generic "rectangular thing on  
the screen" sense) if it has an explicit Cancel button that does the  
same thing.  That some of those might be proper dialogs, and some  
not, would probably be secondary to this particular issue (whilst  
still prolonging the others you mention) if that guideline was  
followed regardless.

> In brief:
>
>       * Dialogs have a close button in their title bars, which makes
>         them look unnecessarily similar to windows. (It's also
>         ambiguous, because some people assume the close button means
>         "Cancel", while others assume it means "Get out of my  
> face", and
>         sometimes these are opposites.)

Yep, have always wanted to see that one fixed.

>       * GNOME has no standard, easy-to-use shortcut for closing
>         non-dialog windows.

True, but does any desktop have one of those?  (And if so, why aren't  
we using it too?)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems