Re: [orca-list] GNOME Weather applet?

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

> > Coming in the future to braille may be some sort of "display message
> > with timeout" feature.  This would allow a message to display for a
> > period of time and then return to displaying the current object with
> > focus.  It's an idea I've resisted for a while, but Mike keeps wearing
> > me down on the subject.
>
> Options are always good, but may I say, I think your initial gut
> feeling about this is pretty right.  Whenever I face a message
> displayed for a certain time delay, I am anoyed
> by it.  Some console apps do that (like lynx).  I think
> auto-timeout messages in braille should only be used if the user
> requests such behaviour...

I really dislike time delay things.  When I encounter them as a user,
they tend to have a way of increasing my stress level ("Oh no...I have
to read this *fast* and *now*.  Hurry hurry hurry.  Oh no...I missed it.
How do I get it back?  Was it important?  Oh no...what am I going to
do?").  They also have a way of introducing complexity in the code. 

If we were to view these temporary messages as braille popup dialogs,
then it seems like something such as Insert+Escape to 'dismiss' them and
move you back to the current locus of focus would be less stressful.  An
issue with this, however, is if/how one might treat them as being modal
so that other user action (e.g., typing in a text area) won't dismiss
them automatically.

Mike and I talked about this yesterday -- he's the UI guy for Orca.
I've always told him that although I'm the overall lead, he's the one to
make the final call on the UI design.  That doesn't mean I won't push an
issue (mostly "let's take it to the user list and see what they want"),
but he does get the final call on UI decisions.  In this case, I
understand that there will be a significant portion of users that want
this timeout feature.

Mike and I also discussed ways to make this manageable via user options,
and he's going to write something up in response to the tool tips RFE:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368640.

Will