GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 135186
strange focus indicator with empty Window List
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:21:48 UTC
When the Window List is empty and focused, a focus line is drawn around what seems like a pretty randomly sized area of the panel. Not sure we can do too much about this, but it does look rather strange. I know we need to show the focus location somehow, but could we do it better than this? Fedora Core bug: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=109354
Created attachment 24686 [details] screenshot
I suppose in a sense this is a dup of the "grab handle never gets focus" bug (which I can't find now), since that's what should really get focus when there are no windows in the list.
It's not only with the Window List. Click anywhere on the gnome-panel, and then use tab and shift-tab to cycle the keyboard focus on the applets. I think this keyboard focus looks quite acceptable. True, it's a bit strange when the Window List is empty. One way to solve this, is obviously to change the look of the keyboard focus. For example, the mouse focus on the Window List items makes the focused item a bit brighter. Another example, the mouse focus on the clock applet makes the clock applet look like a 3D button. Of course, the keyboard focus should look clearly different from the mouse focus. Maybe it's possible to make the applet having the keyboard focus look like a keyboard key, suggesting to press the space bar to activate the applet? Another way to solve this, maybe easier, is to give the Window List a better look when it's empty, for example, 3D deeper than the gnome-panel surface. Then the keyboard focus will look less strange, I think.
Bart: the problem here is that when the window list is empty the focus indicator is on a big part of the panel. Compare with the focus indicator of the notification area when it's empty. Mark: I guess the focus indicator occupies the minimum size of the window list, which is a preference.
Hmm, I think the issue really is that the focus indicator is drawn around empty space, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense really. As Calum says, drawing it around the grab handle is probably a better idea.
I believe this has been fixed while fixing bug 121239.
Nope. Still there.
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Still there in 2.22.
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