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On 3/29/02 23:38, "B Keyport" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What it should be doing SHOULD Be the USER's choice, not anyone else's.
>
> If I want new IM's to open behind other windows, let me do it,
> reguardless of any other preconceived idea, please.
>
> I'm *REALLY* sick of the WindowsWay Coding method. "Where will I
> force you to go today"
>
> Thank you.
There is a reason that Apple leads the industry.
>From the proverbial Day One, Macintosh applications have been designed to
operate in a coherent fashion. The design philosophy revolved heavily
around the concept of learning one application and learning several. Learn
how to control the clipboard, print, or save a file in one application, and
you've pretty much learned how to do the same thing in all of them.
Apple has collected these design ideals together into the Human Interface
Guidelines. The HIG specify how windows should be laid out, what the
standard keyboard shortcuts are, how an application should respond when its
icon is clicked in the dock, and how controls should be laid out in a
window. It specifies that the default button in a dialog box should be
bound to the Return key. It specifies that after the Apple and application
menus, a program should have File, then Edit menus. It specifies that new
windows open in front of other windows.
All this adds to a sense of stability and comfort when working with
applications. They behave in a predictable manner. One doesn't have to
recall which application in which one is working before being able to recall
the keyboard shortcut for copying the selection to the clipboard -- it's
Command-C, not Control-C, Alt-C, Fn-Y, or F7.
It is the intent of the Fire Development Team to make Fire one of the
flagship products of OS X. As such, we will adhere to the HIG as closely as
possible. Causing a new chat window to appear behind another window at all
is a stretch of the HIG, but I realize that it can be irritating to have to
waste those five seconds while bringing back the window you were typing in
and picking up where you left off. As such, I concede that having a new
window pop up behind an existing, actively-used window is preferable to
arbitrarily bringing that new window in front of the window you're using,
but it is poor application design to arbitrarily never open a chat window in
front.
Fire is open-source software. If you disagree with a design element, you
have every right to modify the code to your heart's content. But I refuse
to intentionally design Fire to operate counter to the operation of every
other Macintosh application out there.
You're welcome.
Colter Reed
Lead Fire Developer
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