RFC: Making focus information visible for panes

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

Can you provide a screenshot or quick mockup of what you mean?  There were 
previous proposals of various ways of doing this, including highlighting the 
current frame.  

I agree this is something we need, and the sooner, the better for kde4

On Sunday 26 November 2006 10:50, Jarosław Staniek wrote:
> Hello, this is a request that can fit not only in the usability department
> but also in the accessibility:
>
> Try to run an app that makes use of tabs and a left-hand pane, e.g. Qt
> Assistant 4. You can focus the current window (then, not only Tab key works
> but also recently find-as-you-type search mode).
>
> The problem is that users can never get a hint where the focus is (main
> pane or the side pane). My proposal is to require (from app authors and
> from KDE Style creators) to show the focus by highlighting the current tab
> (with KDE Highlight color, currently blue) if it's focused, and highlight
> the KMainWindow's dock's header in the same way.
>
> I have the same problem in Kexi and cannot fix it without doing nonstandard
> hacks. Same with Qt Designer (it has more panes), KMail, KDevelop and many
> more apps. Without this improvement, applications are poorly accessibly by
> using only keyboard.
>
> Additinal thing is to define a shortcut (and probably show it in each pane
> with underscore), since many keyboard users detest using "switch to next
> pane" action.
>
> The details are for discussion (sorry if this is already adressed, but
> current implementation of KDELibs4 lack this, and maybe this is also Qt4
> issue) Let's make this working early enough and make it clear for
> developers (in the HIGs) that there should be visible focus hint if the
> application is slitted into panes.

-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org
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