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Bug 589975 - Focus indication on just the front tab is misleading
Focus indication on just the front tab is misleading
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gtk+
Classification: Platform
Component: Widget: GtkNotebook
unspecified
Other All
: Normal minor
: ---
Assigned To: gtk-bugs
gtk-bugs
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2009-07-28 08:28 UTC by thorwil
Modified: 2018-02-10 03:39 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Example of one possible style (966 bytes, image/png)
2009-07-28 08:59 UTC, thorwil
Details
Comparison between what happens currently and what would be possible, then (25.74 KB, image/png)
2009-07-28 17:05 UTC, thorwil
Details
Other styles (61.72 KB, image/png)
2009-07-29 11:40 UTC, thorwil
Details

Description thorwil 2009-07-28 08:28:04 UTC
It's not the one tab that has focus, but the notebook. Thus themes should be enabled to draw focus indication across all tabs or even around the whole notebook.

Other information:
Comment 1 thorwil 2009-07-28 08:59:51 UTC
Created attachment 139363 [details]
Example of one possible style
Comment 2 Matthias Clasen 2009-07-28 15:47:31 UTC
To be pedantic, this is not a focus indication at all. It is just highlighting the current tab. The focus indication is somewhere inside the contents, where the actual focus is. I'm not sure if what you are proposing isn't going to distract more from the actual focus rather than help.
Comment 3 thorwil 2009-07-28 17:05:23 UTC
Created attachment 139403 [details]
Comparison between what happens currently and what would be possible, then

I guess some confusion might happened here because notebooks are not allowed to get focus in a number of places.

In some of the Gnome Preferences, focus goes to one of the widgets on the notebook page, never to the tabs.

But in other places including the Mouse Preferences, you get to see focus indication on the front tab. You can then use cursor right/left keys to cycle through tabs. So it is actually the notebook that has focus, not a single tab and none of the contained widgets.

The line is just one possible style, a simple different one could be just changing color of all tabs.
Comment 4 Matthias Clasen 2009-07-28 17:24:38 UTC
In the case you describe, the label widget (or whatever you put there) in the tab actually has the focus, not the notebook itself.
Comment 5 thorwil 2009-07-28 18:10:26 UTC
But the actual input focus is on the notebook, as the label does nothing. Thus drawing focus indication on the label is wrong and themes need a way to do the right thing.
Comment 6 Anton Kerezov 2009-07-29 09:58:14 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> In the case you describe, the label widget (or whatever you put there) in the
> tab actually has the focus, not the notebook itself.
> 

Well not always that is the case. Tabs could also get focus and they should indicate it in the best possible way. Now the focus could be just a rectangle or FLAT_BOX around the text but that could not reach even the edges of active tab (pixmap engine). So a new way of displaying focus would be a great advantage for future gnome releases.
Comment 7 Calum Benson 2009-07-29 10:59:48 UTC
It may be that showing a focus indicator around just the label is better for, say, screen magnifier users, as they may not be able to see the whole tab at once.  In which case, a highlight around the tab's border may look more like the 'selected tab' indicator that we currently have in Clearlooks, rather than a focus indicator.

Regardless, anything to do with focus indication is an accessibility issue, so setting keywords and cc'ing a couple of accessibility folks for comments.
Comment 8 Anton Kerezov 2009-07-29 11:16:14 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)

> Regardless, anything to do with focus indication is an accessibility issue, so
> setting keywords and cc'ing a couple of accessibility folks for comments.

Cool. I think that the desktop should have different appearance for both types of people. I'm not trying to make someone a better or worse people because of its inabilities but they just use the computer in other way that most users. So imo there should be some setting to draw different things for "normal" users and for those that have problems. In this case all will benefit form the best graphics thus not being mediocre ( something for both but not exclusively for someone) 

Comment 9 thorwil 2009-07-29 11:40:00 UTC
Created attachment 139464 [details]
Other styles

Quick examples of other approaches, starting with not focus and current situation as the first 2.

Still excludes drawing a frame around or coloring the entire notebook, which should also be possible.
Comment 10 Willie Walker 2009-07-29 12:24:39 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> Created an attachment (id=139464) [edit]
> Other styles

The second choice looks to be the one the most clearly identifies the tab that has focus to me.
Comment 11 thorwil 2009-07-29 13:50:29 UTC
On #10:
You need to keep tab-selection and input-focus apart. The rectangle you get to see, currently, is not about marking the selected tab at all. It is just that with selecting a tab, you also select it's label. I ade the mistake to think this would be focus indication, when it is actually just selection. Meanwhile, the notebook simply has no focus indication at all.

From an interaction point of view, that tab itself can't have focus, only the notebook with all tabs at once can have focus.
Comment 12 Matthias Clasen 2018-02-10 03:39:21 UTC
We're moving to gitlab! As part of this move, we are closing bugs that haven't seen activity in more than 5 years. If this issue is still imporant to you and
still relevant with GTK+ 3.22 or master, please consider creating a gitlab issue
for it.