Typing trouble - clvrmnky

Hmmm. Might be an issue with "click-through" and "click to focus" Basically, unless you see a cursor, all you've done with the first click on a Mac is to bring the app to focus. The second click tells the no active app to do something.

Think of this as:

Click 1: The OS/WindowServer says "Hey Microsoft Messenger, wake up! Someone wants to use you."
Click 2: Messenger sees your click and does something based on your gesture. In this case, activates a text input widget and notifies the cursor to change.

This is typical as-designed Mac behaviour, BTW. There are a few exceptions, mostly in the Finder.

For example, when I bring a browser window to focus, sometime I want to hit the address bar for a quick URL lookup. Nope. You have to click to get the browser to focus, and then click into the address bar. Same thing.

Workaround: Messenger should accept a tab to cycle through it's hotspots, highlighting the text input area in some manner based on this gesture when it is active. Most browsers do this, for example, with my address bar example above.

However, and here is a potential bug, if Messenger does not remember that the text area was in focus and active when you click away and then back (once) then this is contrary Apple's UI guidelines.

Otherwise, sometimes it takes two clicks for any Mac application to bring specific stuff to focus. The app should remember, but it cannot anticipate.

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Thursday, August 11 2005 @ 11:10 AM PDT