

The OSX Focus-Follows-Mouse Debate - breily
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-follows-mouse-debate.html

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derefr
I can understand the problem, but isn't there a sort of "gordian knot"
solution for this? In other words, can't you "domesticate" autoraise into a
kinder, gentler autofocus?

When you keydown and your mouse isn't within the current window:

1\. Store the z-positions of all windows (if you haven't already)

2\. raise the window you're hovering over to the front and focus it

3\. re-send the event

4\. set a timer to reset the z-positions of all windows, refocusing the old
window

5\. if you happen to _click_ anywhere, simply kill the timer and throw away
the z-stack.

Hopefully, any animations associated with window refocusing could temporarily
be turned off for both z-shuffling events, and in the interstice there could
be some smooth "fade-decay" effect that shows that the window is indeed
receiving input behind it, but only temporarily. Feels Apple-y already.

~~~
frankus
One of the commenters points this out, but bringing the under-the-mouse
application into focus isn't strictly speaking a problem, _assuming it doesn't
fuck up the window stacking_ (although it might be a little slow).

An approach that might work would be to bring the application under the mouse
to the logical "front" (i.e. it's menu bar shows up), but suppress the re-
ordering of windows that normally occurs.

This would probably be an OS-level thing that Apple would have to do, however,
rather than something SteveY could hack together in two days.

FFM does work within any one application, since Terminal supports it:

    
    
      defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES
    

(you have to re-launch Terminal). Then all Terminal windows do FFM, and the
focused window has the standard focused appearance, except without popping to
the top of the window stack like it normally would.

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davidw
No way could I live without focus follows mouse. His description of the
annoyance is perfect.

It's also a good example of why open source matters, even for low level stuff.
To make his computer work like he wants, all he can do is ask Apple nicely and
hope. Maybe he'll even get his wish because he's famous, but I'd much rather
have the source code.

~~~
pchristensen
I love the micro world of Hackers where Steve Yegge is considered famous. (for
me too - I anticipate his essays more than most $100,000,000 budget movies).
I'd be surprised if Jobs knows who Yegge is and caters to his personal
requests :)

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jrockway
I've played with KDE 4 a bit, and it looks like it steals Apple's font
antialiasing algorithm... at least for Konqueror. It's _really_ pretty.

The nice part is that it works fine with xmonad, which is something I couldn't
give up. I used to take great pride in perfectly arranging my windows.
Complete waste of time, it's much nicer to have the computer do it for you.

~~~
superchink
I think that's because they both use WebKit for rendering. Am I wrong?

~~~
icky
Webkit is a fork of Konqueror. Konqueror may have merged in some nice stuff
from Webkit by now... :)

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ken
I used to be a big f-f-m fan, but it doesn't make sense in the Mac UI at all,
due to the menubar (as he notes). So I got over it.

But the big missing feature that doesn't contradict the UI at all is the
ability to _lower_ a window. It would solve his "I want to type 'make' over
there but then end up with the terminal window on the bottom", too.

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ijkl
Is OS X font rendering that much nicer? I use Ubuntu with hinting turned off
and _no_ subpixel rendering (just gray) and it looks beautiful.

Could anyone who has access to both OS X and GNU/Linux post side-by-side
screenshots to compare the two?

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abstractbill
I guess I'm in an even smaller minority.

I use OS X, but I wish I could have the old sawfish behavior, where clicking
on a window gave it focus but did _not_ raise it, and clicking on a window's
title-bar gave it focus _and_ raised it.

~~~
abstractbill
The other thing that bugs me is, of course, the completely useless green "+"
button, which seems to mean "randomize the size and position of this window"
:-/

(other than those two, OS X is without a doubt the most enjoyable OS I've ever
used).

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glyphobet
There's a third flavor of FFM: <http://glyphobet.net/blog/essay/234>

