[sugar] frame auto-visibility configuration

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Good grief !

> Do we have observations of how users (students) navigate?  Are they
> using the frame to do all navigation (e.g. by pressing the frame button
> to reveal it or mousing to a corner)?  Or are they alt+tabbing everywhere?

I'm not a kid.  I wish that someone *would* observe students, and 
prove me wrong.  I just put up a bunch of *complex* screens (from 
various activities).  Having disabled the frame, I can alt-tab to 
the next screen in a fraction of a second.  Even when I have to 
traverse multiple screens, the time for me to get somewhere is only 
a second or two.  That is way faster for me than looking at Frame.


WHY is everyone talking about switching from the work one is doing, 
to looking at the icons in the Frame?

I agree that when there are 20 Activities running, it makes sense to 
go *directly* to the screen one wants (without passing through the 
other 18).  But few students are likely to have 20 Activities 
running.  Besides, how will the student be able to tell among 
umpteen identical *icons* which is the one for the work he wants to 
do next?  I maintain that by simply alt-tabbing through the screens, 
the student will *easily* recognize (and stop tabbing) when he comes 
to the one he wants to do more work in.


> just noticed
> that if you hit the alt-tab like some 1980 track'n field game in the
> arcades, you can select a different activity with out focusing all the
> others on the way there. This IMO is the wrong behaviour, even with a
> longer delay to allow less frenetic tab key hitting, the behaviour
> should be to focus ON RELEASE of the alt key. That way you can take
> all the time in the world scanning the icons and choosing where you
> need to get too.

I can't __imagine__ why one would have to decide what screen one 
wanted to look at next.  [Maybe if the user had gotten riled up by 
what he was doing, and now was contemplating which other screen 
would be more soothing?]

And if one *must* "choose" (and perform a "direct" transfer) -- why 
not go to Journal instead of Frame?  At least Journal will show the 
entry-fields from all the running Activities, so one can identify 
the particular activity-instance one wants.


--------

When I want to transfer screens I KNOW where I want to go.  All that 
remains is the mechanism of getting there.  My point is that if 
distractions such as the frame are gotten out of the way, then one 
can (without losing his train of thought) perform a simple action -- 
alt-tabbing -- and STOP when one gets to where one wants to be.


mikus


p.s.  If the current alt-tab implementation has a performance impact
       (for instance, if a snapshot of each displayed screen were
       being taken) -- please work on the behavior of the software --
       NOT on the behavior of the USER (which is what "burdening"
       alt-tab accomplishes).]