Usability on Mac OSX
There are some irritating usability problems with Mac OSX that are missing when compared to Linux and Windows.
I find that one of the most annoying things about OSX, both win32 and Linux support that feature…and it’s not only the lack of “focus follows mouse” but also the necessity to click twice to get your action.
For example, a browser window open, but in the background and I want to click a link, I have to click twice: once to focus the browser into the foreground and again to trigger the clicking on the link. Rather annoying.
I did find a few resources for *some* applications that support “focus follows mouse”, but it only appears to work within the application only, not between different applications.
I find the lack of a “tabbing” support in Mac OSX to be rather disturbing as well. I checked the accessibility settings, and there is still no way to force my browser (or other apps) to tab through the interface stopping on objects in the window.
Here are some more resources:
- http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/
- http://acs.pha.jhu.edu/general/computing/faq/os/os_x/opt/#ffm
- http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000149.html
