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Submission details

10 +16/-6 votes

Clicking buttons in inactive windows

Submitted by Hansii on September 1, 2008 to Bug, Usability

If you click a button in an inactive Finder window the button is clicked, but a lot of applications does not have the same behavior.

Give clearer UX guidelines.

Low

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (2 comments)

Grey_Podder wrote on September 1, 2008, 6:58pm

It works in every included Mac OS X application I have. If it doesn't work in a particular application, I suspect that the app maker has some work to do, not Apple.

polycat33 wrote on September 2, 2008, 12:46am

Maybe I don't understand the issue, but I just tested with two Finder windows, and clicking on a button in an inactive Finder window only brings that window to the front, it doens't click the button - which I think is good because if you just want to bring another window to the front but accidentally click on a button in that window while you're doing it, it would be irritating to have that button actually be clicked. Buttons shouldn't be clickable unless they're in the active window - and they aren't as far as I can see.

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