Developer focus for Fedora workstation

[Adam Batkin]

> GNOME works really well with a keyboard only. You can start and switch
> apps very easily with the keyboard
> "super + typepartofname + enter" ...

Isn't that for launching a new instance of an app?

I often have 2 or 3 windows that I'm actively working with. That's a 
small enough number that my brain is able to remember where they are in 
the stacking order so Alt+Tab works nicely for switching. Actually 
Alt+Tab works pretty well with the alternate-tab extension. Except that 
closing windows, launching of new windows and switching virtual desktops 
seems to throw everything off.

But no, having to type part of the name of a window takes significantly 
more time and requires significantly more hand movement (my left hand 
usually lives right over the Alt and Tab keys, which also happens to be 
near Alt+F4 and Ctrl+D which takes care of closing most windows). And 
also requires a lot more brain power, since if I have an editor, a 
terminal and a web browser open, I already subconsciously know how many 
times I need to hit the Tab key before I will end up on the window that 
I want, but thinking of the name of the program is a lot more work.

> And no you do *not* need a touchscreen for anything. Repeating that
> does not make it true.

My comments about touchscreens were more about the large amounts of 
empty space in some places (makes it easier to poke things with a 
finger) and the drag-to-remove-screen-blanker (which is ONLY helpful if 
you have a touchscreen).

>> But there are a bunch of other "polish" things that I think also need to be
>> fixed. For example:
>> * There are at least half a dozen Gnome Bugzillas that I've come across
>> around focus and window stacking issues - and I think I've encountered every
>> one of them. This is maddening. For someone who uses the keyboard as much as
>> possible, this makes the system almost unusable
>
> What are those focus and stacking issues? You have to name them
> otherwise we can't discuss / solve them.

I'll start a new thread.

>> * The default theme makes it difficult to easily distinguish the Focused
>> window from all other windows - again, maddening when you have lots of
>> windows spread across multiple very high resolution monitors. Especially
>> with all the window focus/stacking issues
>
> Really? At least for gtk3 apps the whole unfocsued window dims
> ("backdrop") which makes it very cleary shown as unfocsued.
> Again no idea what your "focus / stacking issues are"

I'm not saying there is no distinction, I'm saying that it's not a very 
big distinction (i.e. there needs to be more contrast) so it can be hard 
to pick out the difference when you have a lot of screen real estate in 
front of you (i.e. multiple large high resolution monitors) and many 
windows spread around. If I remember correctly, both KDE's default theme 
and Windows Aero suffer from the same problems. But I'm trying to use 
the out-of-the-box defaults since I know they will be better supported 
(i.e. cross-toolkit theming, support for new widgets, less buggy, 
etc...) whereas in KDE (which is already non-default) I would have 
changed the theme and in Windows I would have disabled Aero (active 
windows have a blue titlebar, inactive get gray, which is fantastic).

-Adam Batkin