SharkD schrieb:

> Is there an ALT-TAB substitute on Windows that utilizes the mouse? Maybe 
> a hotkey + mousewheel?

My old Logitech mouse had dedicated buttons for that below and above the 
scroll wheel; never really used them though... aside from that - no, I 
think I just tried any possible combo of Alt, Shift and Ctrl. Anything 
more exotic would be less convenient than just pressing alt-tabl, so I 
don't expect any such.

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clipka wrote:

> Another thing bothering me about KDE4 is its standard of single-clicking 
> a highlighted item to activate it, but they can't be blamed for me being 
> so accustomed to the Windows Way, and I concede that the KDE4 Way is 
> indeed more consistent with web browser standard behavior.

I'm 98% sure that this is configurable. In fact, I seem to remember the 
very first time I logged in with KDE it asked me which behaviour I 
wanted. (Unfortunately it wants you to pick a bundle of settings, and no 
single bundle actually had the exact combination I wanted, but still...)

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There are a couple of annoying things about Windows too.



First, clicking on a window brings it to the foreground. You migth say 
"well how else could it possibly work?" But back in the days of AmigaOS, 
clicking a window gives it focus, but doesn't actually raise it to the 
top of the screen.

Now *usually* either policy is fine. However, it's occasionally annoying 
when you have a fullscreen window and you want to copy some information 
from a smaller window into the fullscreen window. Under AmigaOS, you 
just position the windows where you want them, click the big window and 
start typing. Under Windows, if you do this, the big window will occlude 
the smaller one.

Sure, you can change window sizes, but it's irritating.

(On the other hand, under AmigaOS, if the raise and lower buttons are 
obscured, you can't raise or lower the window, which is arguably far 
more annoying.)



The other thing that annoys me is the scroll wheel. Why oh why oh WHY 
does it NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SCROLL THE THING YOU WANT TO 
SCROLL?! >_<

This is so exasperating! I point at something, scroll the wheel, and 
some unrelated item somewhere else on the screen scrolls. WTF? The most 
frequent example of this is in Windows Explorer. You open a folder than 
contains millions of files, so you scroll the wheel... and the folder 
list at the side scrolls 2 pixels left/right, rather than the main pane 
scrolling down three pages like you actually wanted. WHY?!?! >_<



Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task bar 
should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> First, clicking on a window brings it to the foreground. You migth say
> "well how else could it possibly work?" But back in the days of AmigaOS,
> clicking a window gives it focus, but doesn't actually raise it to the
> top of the screen.

My single biggest gripe with every modern windowing gui. Acorn's RISCOS also had
the feature you describe. Maybe it's just the workflow habits I got into back
then, but to this day I am continually vexed by MS's windows jumping to the top
of the stack as soon as you glance at them.

> (On the other hand, under AmigaOS, if the raise and lower buttons are
> obscured, you can't raise or lower the window, which is arguably far
> more annoying.)

Under RISCOS, clicking any window control (including the titlebar) brought it to
the front.

> Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task bar
> should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!

I find that one handy - it's a much bigger target than the minimise icon! :)

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>> First, clicking on a window brings it to the foreground. You migth say
>> "well how else could it possibly work?" But back in the days of AmigaOS,
>> clicking a window gives it focus, but doesn't actually raise it to the
>> top of the screen.
> 
> My single biggest gripe with every modern windowing gui. Acorn's RISCOS also had
> the feature you describe. Maybe it's just the workflow habits I got into back
> then, but to this day I am continually vexed by MS's windows jumping to the top
> of the stack as soon as you glance at them.

Under X11, you just need to write a custom window manager and you can 
change this. Under Windows, you can write a new Explorer UI, but I don't 
think you can actually change the window focus behaviour...

>> (On the other hand, under AmigaOS, if the raise and lower buttons are
>> obscured, you can't raise or lower the window, which is arguably far
>> more annoying.)
> 
> Under RISCOS, clicking any window control (including the titlebar) brought it to
> the front.

Yes, it's hardly a difficult problem to solve. It's just that AmigaOS 
didn't have a solution.

>> Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task bar
>> should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!
> 
> I find that one handy - it's a much bigger target than the minimise icon! :)

And I find it irritating that when I'm flicking through half a dozen 
windows, if I accidentally click on the window that happens to be 
selected already, it tries to minimise it.

Maybe I'm biased because on my ancient PC, minimising and maximising 
windows is quite a slow operation... But, in general, I never minimize 
windows at all. (Except to reach the desktop.)

I will say, though, that the taskbar itself is a nice idea. (Under 
AmigaOS, you could sometimes "lose" windows if you couldn't find a way 
to bring them to the front. The default Workbench window is always 
fullscreen...)

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clipka wrote:
> Another thing bothering me about KDE4 is its standard of single-clicking 
> a highlighted item to activate it, but they can't be blamed for me being 
> so accustomed to the Windows Way, 

That really hasn't been the "Windows Way" since they came out with Active 
Desktop 10+ years ago. If you want that behavior on Windows, you can turn it 
on too. (I thought it had been the default at least since 2000 or XP.)

On the other hand, it bugs me when I have that on in Linux desktops and 
double-clicks bring up the application twice.  Duh.

> (To be honest, Windows to some degree does the same thing, routing 
> scroll wheel events to whatever the mouse cursor is hovering over; 

I wish Vista consistently worked that way. :-) I find the Windows mouse 
scroll usually useless in Vista, altho I don't remember being annoyed by it 
in XP. Maybe they changed something subtle.

> Ah well, and did I mention that KDE4 uses a totally different font size 
> in a XDMCP login than it does when logged in locally?

Don't fonts always come from the local machine? Or did they fix this in X by 
now?

> And my, this one-click-to-activate thing is more addictive than I 
> thought... I guess I'll turn it back on again...

any explorer window: Tools->Folder Options->General...  in Windows.
And yes, it's much more handy, especially if there's easily found areas of 
the screen where clicking does *not* select anything.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> really miss it when you use M$ Windows!

So turn it on in Windows. GIYF.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Invisible wrote:
> from a smaller window into the fullscreen window.

I saw a demo of a drag-and-drop idea I've been lusting after ever since.

If you pick something up to drag-and-drop it, then move diagonally over the 
corner of a window, it peels the window down like you're curling down the 
page of a book so you can see what's behind it and drop your thing there. 
You could do drag-and-drop between multiple full-screen windows that way.

> Sure, you can change window sizes, but it's irritating.

One of the great advantages of having two screens, too.

> The other thing that annoys me is the scroll wheel. Why oh why oh WHY 
> does it NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SCROLL THE THING YOU WANT TO 
> SCROLL?! >_<

Even the add-ons I've found don't work for this, sadly.

> Also, which moron decided that clicking something twice on the task bar 
> should minimize it? I never *ever* want this to happen!

I find that very handy.  Click to open the window, it's the wrong one, click 
again to fold it back up.  It helps when you have a bunch of windows all 
with the same title big enough you can't read the text that distinguishes them.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Invisible wrote:
> AmigaOS, you could sometimes "lose" windows if you couldn't find a way 

Yeah. Wait until you get a program running full-screen that pops up a modal 
dialog underneath the full-screen window, and that won't let you interact 
with the window until you answer the dialog.

Vista's anti-focus-stealing stuff seems to only prevent focus stealing when 
it's *wrong* to do so. Cripes.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> AmigaOS, you could sometimes "lose" windows if you couldn't find a way 
> 
> Yeah. Wait until you get a program running full-screen that pops up a 
> modal dialog underneath the full-screen window, and that won't let you 
> interact with the window until you answer the dialog.
> 
> Vista's anti-focus-stealing stuff seems to only prevent focus stealing 
> when it's *wrong* to do so. Cripes.

Pretty sure AmigaOS doesn't support model dialogs. (Of course, the 
application can stop responding to UI events that come from other 
windows, or manually disable all the widgets. But it doesn't have the 
"model" dialogs that Windows has, which can't be moved and so forth.)

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