Window focus behavior on click

disaac

Safari and other macOS applications typically require one click to focus a window and another to interact with the content (this excludes toolbar icons). Orion performs both these actions in just one click.

I demonstrate this behavior here:

Whether this behavior is good or not is contentious (especially since the observed Orion behavior is the behavior on Windows), but I find the Safari behavior desirable. If I want to focus a window, the Orion behavior is frustrating because I can inadvertently follow links and such. With the Safari behavior, I can click mostly anywhere.

I have no idea how hard this is to manage as a developer. It might be a dirty issue with the macOS window APIs.

Orion Version 0.99.134-beta (WebKit 622.1.9.19.2)

macOS Sequoia 15.5

JamesW-AU

Would definitely like to see this behaviour changed 🙂

RoxyRoxyRoxy

Just to clarify a bit, this is only true for switching between two Orion windows, switching to Orion from another app still gives "Safari-like" behavior in this regard.

akshatpatel

When interacting between focused / unfocused windows of the same application, a single click focuses + interacts with the unfocused window for all macOS applications - this is system behavior, and not specific to Orion. (You may test this out with multiple Safari windows).

However, when interacting from an active window to an inactive window of a different application, 2 clicks are required - first one to focus and then the second one to interact.

disaac

akshatpatel This is not accurate. In the video I attached to the original post, I demonstrate that the "more information" hyperlink on example.com was not activated on first click in Safari (with Safari already focused).

Here is Apple documentation regarding this (under "Handling Mouse Clicks"):
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/EventOverview/HandlingMouseEvents/HandlingMouseEvents.html

akshatpatel

@disaac Thanks for the follow up. You are correct. Safari indeed does require two clicks to interact with the content in an unfocused window, even when interacting from another Safari focused window. I got confused because the toolbar items and other buttons can be directly interacted with (without a click needed to focus the window).

We'll look into this.

disaac

akshatpatel Thanks! I appreciate your efforts. I understand you guys get a ton of feedback. 🙂