UI misfeature OTD

[prog]

IM clients that immediately give focus -- that is, active-window status -- to incoming messages' windows. I can tell when someone has a client that does this, because I see the "$PERSON is typing" status message (a.k.a. the 'thought balloon' in iChat) the instant I send my first IM, and I know I'm annoying them by making them waste keystrokes on me, which they'll have to erase and then retype into their previous window before turning their attention back to me. (And what if they didn't want to give any attention to me right then? Worse, what if they hit Return before realizing what happened (which is very easy to do), actually sending me some text intended for someone else? Argh!!)

iChat does things correctly, by popping up a window with visual and audio cues, but maintaining focus on whatever window currently owned it; you must click on the new IM window to do anything with it.

On the other hand, I have actually stopped using Psi as my everyday Jabber client because I can't figure out how to make it not do this, without turning off new-message alerts altogether (which I also don't want).

Comments

Focus-stealing sucks ass

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I need to switch from Psi at some point too. Unfortunately Gaim has the same problem.