[Design] Selections without focus in Chandler

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Bear,

Just to clarify, are you asking why the focus doesn't  shift to the  
sidebar when you single-click a collection?

Here's some background on this issue: http://lists.osafoundation.org/ 
pipermail/design/2006-January/003759.html

Brief summary: when a user clicks on a collection in sidebar, that  
does not necessarily mean that their mental focus has shifted to the  
sidebar. In fact more often than not, their focus remains in the  
summary pane and they are simply manipulating the sidebar as a way to  
change what they see in the summary pane.

Especially in email clients, people have reported repeatedly,  
mistakenly using the arrow keys to navigate in the summary table view  
after switching folders, only to find that the keyboard focus shifted  
to the sidebar when they clicked to change views...
+ which can be very jarring because your main view changes; and
+ slow because your rapidly flipping through whole collections of  
items, rather than individual items

But again, not sure if this was your question...

Mimi

On Oct 6, 2006, at 9:43 AM, John Anderson wrote:

>
>> First, the only concern I would have is to make sure the gray  
>> color of the text is always in contrast to the background color or  
>> you will confuse people who have worse color vision than myself :)
> Yes, readability is essential.
>>
>> Second - and this is a more general question, should the keyboard  
>> focus always be where the attention of the user is?  I would think  
>> that would be required if Chandler is to be used without a mouse.
> Often, but not always, your attention goes to the part of the  
> screen with the keyboard focus, e.g. the caret when you're typing.
>
> However, the point of keyboard focus is to make it clear what is  
> affected by typing or menu commands.
>
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