I read about the new update today and then right-clicked the Avast tray icon and chose to update the software as usual… Then it asked me if I wanted to restart my system and I chose no, pretending to do so later.
Ok and then I’m back to browsing the Web, doing stuff in my computer… I was typing and suddenly the little dialog asking to restart appeared, I pressed the spacebar and done, my computer started to restart.
The dialog mustn’t appear on front of other Windows, focused, and with the focus on “Yes”!! This definitely needs to change in the next updates.
(Happily I wasn’t doing something important…)
I hope you can fix this.
I have never had that happen in all of the program updates in over seven and a half years of using avast.
Once I have dismissed the reboot option, by clicking the No button it hasn’t reappeared later for me. Now I don’t leave it a huge amount of time as once I have installed the update, I complete what I happen to be doing then. Basically save and close what I was doing and reboot as I want to update to be concluded.
So I don’t know if you leave it a long time the notice would pop-up again and If so I would have thought it would have had focus as it did first time round. I also don’t know if using the space-bar might have any impact as Yes would be the active button.
The dialog DOES appear again after some time, on front of all other windows, focused, with Yes button pre-selected, which is pressed by either spacebar or enter. :-
I’m absolutely sure of what I’m talking about. I actually tested it on purpose and find out this happens, and it’s a bad behavior.
If the spacebar has that effect, then that as far as I’m concerned isn’t right and should be restricted to the Enter key only. Or have no active button and the user has to select one.
Have you never used TAB to navigate through UI elements and used spacebar to press buttons? It’s the behavior of spacebar and enter.
The problem here is that the dialog appears on the foreground (on fron of all other windows). Look how Windows Update does it… The little restart reminder pops-up in the background, preventing accidents.
Yes, I have used Tab and Alt+Tab etc. for other tasks, though in the avastUI I never bother as I’m quicker on my mouse. But I never use the spacebar to emulate enter. I always use the left mouse button or enter depending on what I have in my right hand at the time.
And answering your previous post, the thing mustn’t be restrited to enter because:
This wouldn’t solve the problem, Ithe user (me) could be just about to break a(some) line(s) when typing in the other application, or doing whatever other thing that requires the use of enter and spacebar that would cause the “accident”.
It’s widely accepted that the spacebar key is meant to press focused buttons.
The solution is to make the restart reminder window to appear in the background. It’s simple.
That is were you and I disagree, for me a security program update that that requires a reboot should place that prominently and that can’t be in the background.
However, what I think is immaterial as I’m just an avast user and have no control over it.
You as the user has power into the company decisions, if you don’t have then the company is bad.
Even if neither Yes or No were pre-focused it would still interfere with me using the computer, and still have the possibility I was about to perform an action pressing TAB and then space or enter fast (as I aways do browsing the Web), and that would cause the accidental restart.
And @jadinolf, you came here and added nothing new to the discussion. You most probably use Firefox. Notice how their updates don’t mess with your use, don’t disturb you asking to restart even if it’s the super dangerous radioactive security bug fix… So please think before posting.
I think it will be more convenient to the user that the popup does not have any focused button. If it can’t be done, why not focus the “No” button? Just airing ideas…
See the #3 on my previous post. It’d still cause the accident and be intrusive to what the user is doing.
The reminder must appear in the background. :
I don’t know about this specific notification / dialog window you are talking about, but most tray notification from Avast are not stealing focus. They are not “in the background” visually (as you can see them in front), but if you were typing for example, then the focus is still positioned on the same program it was while the tray notification just showed up.
I’m not sure that for this particular case the behavior should be the same though.
Yes, I understand the difference. My point is that there are methods so to make it “background”, “foreward”, “take focus”, or whatever else. It just depends on programing it differently.
I repeat that I am not 100% sure if for this particular case I would like to see the same type of resulting behavior (whichever the type of window / notification / dialog / whatever). Generally speaking, being “foreground” (so to keep seeing the very important notice) but yet not stealing focus seems to be a good balance, whichever the keys (tab, enter, space, arrows) represent.
I think it’s possible to program it to appear in the background.
But you gave some interesting ideas too, like, the notification could be a tray notification and then it wouldn’t steal focus and still visible. Or it could even be implemented as one of those Avast!'s own colored boxes notifications (like the ones notifying you the definitions has been updated, viroses blocked, etc…).
