Sunday, March 6, 2016

A prime directive for User Interaction

If you're familiar with the sci-fi francise called "Star Trek", a depiction of humanity in a more evolved, more civilized state, you will already be familiar with the concept of a prime directive. For everyone else i wil explain it in this post and also show why we need such a prime directive for user interaction.

A prime directive as depicted by star trek is a law.

For the purpose of restoring user interfaces to their former good standing, and putting the user back in their rightful plase as the surpreme ruler of their computers, i want to take the concept of the prime directive one step further. Not only should the prime directive stand above all other laws, all other laws should be derived from the prime directive. The essence, and soul in every law should inherit the philosophy of the prime directive.
And that prime directive is:

The user must at all times be in complete control of their computing activity.


Upon reading this, a critic might argue that this is impossible. In order to be in complete control of the computer, the user would have to flip every bit and manipulate every register manually. This is not using a computer.
the key word is Activity. This refers to what the User is doing, not what is happening in the background.,

Kwin window manager

Kwin is the default window manager for the K desktop environment. In the near future, I will explain in further detail what a window manager is and what a desktop environment is.
The important information right now is the fact that kwin is your guardian against UI harassment . especially violent focus stealing and oppressive Z-sorting of application windows.
In this post, i will describe in detail the benefits of using kwin in everyday desktop use.
As stated before, the sole and highest authority of the desktop is the user. No program may disturb the order established by the user without express order by the user.

Focus stealing protection

this video shows what happens if you tell the terminal emulator application to open a new window. first, without focus stealing protection, and then with kwin focus stealing protection
the blue window decoration indicates focus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0oQvCmn81Q

The kwin settings can be reached through the window menu or  kde settings -> window behavior

 window z-ordering

Another advantage of the Kwin window manager is z-ordering for the windows.

Applications automatically making themselves always on top

A window wants to force itself to be always on top? kwin can put a stop to this outrageous insubordination.
To disable an application from forcing itself on top, click on the application  icon/window button on the top left corner of the window's window decoration. Then go to more actions >  and click special application settings
the  window for editing application-specific settings will open. Go to the Arrangement & Access tab.

Enable the Keep above control. In the drop-down menu, select Force, and click the radio button No

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-XkXd_A8o

congratulations. You have prevented this application from staying always on top. Not even setting the always-on-top flag from the window manager settings under more actions will be able to force this window on top now.  you can choose to edit this setting at any time. If you, however, want to choose  the always-on-top setting from the application window menu manually, you should select remember or apply initially from the drop-down menu.