5 ms·
This seems to me to be a special case of a more general problem which we've been seeing for decades, which is that unexpected dialogues can manifest themselves
by EdwardCoffin 9y ago
This seems to me to be a special case of a more general problem which we've been seeing for decades, which is that unexpected dialogues can manifest themselves and then respond to user input intended for whatever application they were interacting with before the dialogue showed up.
I've never been able to understand why the operating system does not manage this case and ignore input that occurs within say 0.25 seconds of the dialogue's appearance, on the grounds that humans generally can't react so quickly to something they just saw, so they must not have really meant it.
- IanSanders 9y ago>I've never been able to understand why the operating system does not manage this case and ignore input that occurs within say 0.25 seconds of the dialogue's appearance That's why Firefox save file dialog is inactive for the first few seconds.
- beobab 9y agoI was thinking about this yesterday. Dozens of times I type a search into cortana - see my item - click on it, and milliseconds before I click (but before I can avert the action) the item changes. I have at times almost felt the electrons racing down the nerves in my arm in my attempt to not click. I like your idea of a .25 second delay. I can normally send a movement request to my hand in about .13 seconds (fastest time I can click twice on a stopwatch is .13 seconds), so .25 is good for me.
- seba_dos1 9y agoSome window managers like KWin implement some measures to deal with that, called "focus stealing protection".
- majewsky 9y agoFocus stealing prevention is one of these things that's so pleasantly invisible that you only start to appreciate it when using a window manager that lacks it.
- freehunter 9y ago>humans generally can't react so quickly to something they just saw I feel like Facebook does this in their app when you post something to a page and it pisses me off to no end. I know as soon as I post something it's going to pop up a full-screen confirmation so I'm hovering over the X to close it and as soon as it pops up I tap it... and tap. And tap. And tap tap tap tap tap tap come on I have other stuff to do and tap tap tap tap and now finally it closes.
- nathan_long 9y agoThis is exactly what I was going to suggest. It would also be nice to signal what's happening to the user by fading in the notification, so that only when it's solid does it intercept your tap.
- EdwardCoffin 9y agoThis would be a nice visual cue for sure.
- apple4ever 9y agoOooo that's a great idea
- oceanghost 9y agoA few years ago I was using Adium, and clicked on my girlfriends named, "Jenn" and said, "Hello sexpot!" Except that's not what happened. My friend James logged in, a moment before I clicked and his name replaced hers where my mouse was. I absentmindedly typed "Hello sexpot!" Well, we laughed it off eventually... but yea.