I have a new requirement for Bill Gates and Windows 7 … let me explain. Despite all our advancements in operating systems and user interfaces, computer OSs are still incredibly stupid when it comes to one user experience that’s always pushed my hot button — switching context away from an input field while the user is typing. So any developers working on operating systems and user interfaces, please hear my plea and fix this long, annoying design flaw.
I don’t know about you but this happens to me a lot. An application will be doing something or fulfilling some request (such as performing a software update, for example), and while it’s busy I’ll switch away to my web browser or another application to keep on working. Then some seconds or minutes later while in mid-sentence, my typing is interrupted as some window decides it needs attention and grabs focus, presenting itself on top of whatever application I was in the middle of typing in or using. Hey, stop that! I was typing something! Couldn’t you see I was busy doing something?
Internet Explorer is one of a thousand applications which does this too. My startup URL for IE is an SSL site that takes a moment to load. Frequently, I’ll start IE knowing I don’t want that start up page, and will begin entering a different URL into the URL address field. If I don’t finish typing in the URL and hit enter in time, IE suddenly comes to life, loads the original start page and wipes out whatever I was in the middle of typing.
It doesn’t seem that hard to design a user interaction model for computer interfaces that would understand, if the keyboard is busy then don’t interrupt the user. It’s a little thing, but this design flaw has always bugged me. I would really appreciate it if Windows 7 or any other operating system would stop doing this. Maybe those attending CHI 2008, the conference for designers discussing computer human interaction, could discuss the topic and tackle this problem.
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