Workrave and XP magnifier.
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Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Hugh Sasse
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Workrave has been imaged onto a machine I support. I have to use
the Windows magnifier (which you can bring up with <Windows-R> then type magnify<return>, when it comes up press return to get rid of the message about access software, <up-arrow> a few times to increase the magnification to about 6, then <return> to minimize the magnifier options window) in order to work with that display. When Workrave brings up the pre-break warning dialogue, it appears over the magnifier window, and it is thus not magnified. Trying to move the mouse over the window in order to see its contents results in the window moving to the bottom of the screen. Moving the mouse to the window's new position results on it moving back to the top of the screen. How is one supposed to see the contents of this window when using the magnifier? When the break dialogue comes up, there are no keyboard shortcuts for it. There is also no help facility in it to find out what it will do once the progress bar reaches the end. So far I have managed to skip or postpone the thing before that happens. Given that I can't see the mouse pointer on the screen without the magnification, it is extremely difficult to navigate to wherever this window comes up at short notice. I later noticed a really small window on the desktop, with a coffee cup icon and a time (3:50 I think) in an entry box next to it, and a couple of similar boxes below. I think this is part of the same program. It is not possible to resize this window in order to see the program name properly on the title bar, but it does begin with "Wo". It is not possible to see from the exposed part of the window whether the times are hours:minutes, or minutes:seconds. There seem to be no tooltips to say what the icons are for, and no help facility. Someone pointed out a very small sheep icon on the taskbar, but the tooltips for that don't mention the program name, only talking about micro-breaks. Only by searching for micro-breaks using Google did I find out what this program might be, and thus find that workrave is installed on here. Is anyone able to reproduce this behaviour? Are there any configuration files/tools to make this program more accessible? Thank you, Hugh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Ray Satiro
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Kees-Jan Dijkzeul
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Hi Hugh,
Workrave is a program designed to prevent RSI. It tries to do so by periodically popping up windows suggesting the user to take a break. Depending on how it is configured, it can become pretty insistent. Some (if not most) people are very annoyed by Workrave's continuus popups, leading to elevated stress levels, which, eventually, leads to RSI. For them, Workrave is counterproductive. Hence, I strongly believe that workrave should only be used by people who consciously decide they want to. You sound like workrave was forced upon you, which is, in my opinion, a bad idea. If support people come over to help me with my machine, I make it a point to disable workrave for them before handing over mouse and/or keyboard. Lots of thought has gone into workrave usability already. Overall, we are aiming to be as unobtrusive as possible. This is why windows "jump away" when you hover the mouse over them: The assumption is that you want to click something that is underneath. For the same reason, keyboard shortcuts are disabled on break windows: If a break window pops up while you are typing, you do not want your keystrokes to result in buttons being pressed. To make a long story shorter: Although much effort has been invested in usability already, though the focus is on "normal" people, and not the visually- or otherwise-impaired. So far, I don't think I've been much help (thanks for following along till here). I'm not sure where to go from here. For visually impaired people that decide to use workrave, I'm a bit unsure where the major usability issues are. Workrave's popup windows always show the same content, so a regular user will not want to read them anyway, just be aware that they are there, so they can decide to take a break. To support this mode, there are sound events that depend on the popup being shown, so you could know what workrave is doing even with your eyes closed. Like I said, I'm not sure where to improve. You sound like a user who is confronted with workrave without being familiar with it. This is a difficult situation to work from, since it is workrave's job to annoy you. I could tell you how to get workrave out of your way (locate the sheep icon in the system tray, right click it, and then choose "Quit" or "Mode->Suspended"), but I don't know how to improve usability here, without making things worse for our regular users. I absolutely see the problem. It is just that many of the things you mention are so by design (except maybe the non-resizable status window and obviously the sorely lacking documentation). Sorry I couldn't be more help. Maybe anyone else has suggestions? Groetjes, Kees-Jan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Ray Satiro
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Hugh Sasse
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On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Ray Satiro wrote:
> Hello Hugh, > > After re-reading your e-mail and testing the magnifier, I think > it's unlikely we will be incorporating an enhancement to make > Workrave more accessible when using that tool. Why is that? > > I'm looking into a solution for the issue where Workrave break > windows are not controllable via keyboard. OK. Is it possible to avoid grabbing focus from another app, or to give it back to that app pretty much immediately? That would allow me to click on the window to access its controls if I need to, but not otherwise. This is provided that the window doesn't run away from the mouse. > > As Kees-Jan suggested in an earlier e-mail this afternoon, you can > suspend Workrave on the computer you support by right-clicking its > icon and choosing Mode > Suspended. The owner can later enable > Workrave by changing the mode from 'Suspended' to 'Normal'. Yes, and that is all very well, but I couldn't see the icon, didn't know what to look for, and could see no information about what the package was called. All I could see was windows popping up about micro-breaks, and there is no application called micro-breaks on the system. I think the following things would help considerably: 1 Make the name of the tool more prominent in the interface, allowing one to find its files in C:\Program Files, and so on;. 2 Provide a help button, which displays the contents of the README, but with a little text saying what the application is for, and telling people to look at the system tray for the sheep icon. Pointing to the web is not enough, something Microsoft need to learn about for their documentation: there are plenty of reasons why the internet may not be reachable; 3 Provide some means which is also prominent of stopping the application, still allowing it to restart at next login, or whatever. I'm thinking of a stop button in the popup windows, possibly with an "are you sure?" dialogue warning about the risks of RSI, etc; 4 Allow the resizing of the dialogue with the times in it. I'd argue that all windows should be resizable because (for example in safe mode) sometimes the resolution of the display is very low, and windows won't fit on the screen. I have had this with system windows which I could not close because the only close or OK buttons were off the bottom of the screen when the window was pushed up against the top. Its present behaviour, with popups and the difficulty of killing it unless you know where to look, gave the same impression as a piece of malware. Clearly it does need to interrupt the person who is working to the extent that they notice it and respond by having a break. If it takes control of the system, regardless of the needs of the user, then in my opinion, this violates the whole principle that the computer is supposed to be the servant of the user, not the master. If the user is medically, or legally, obliged to obey the software, that is surely a matter for the human, not the machine? At present it is interfering with other users providing support to the principal user of the machine. I suggest that you think about the issuse in this Scientific American article on Considerate Computing. http://interruptions.net/literature/Gibbs-SA05-0105054.pdf On the machine I was using, its principal user didn't expect the software to be there either, and didn't know how to get rid of the interruptions. > > To Hugh and the rest of the mailing list, > Workrave uses a graphical user interface (GTK+) which is DPI > aware, however Workrave itself may not be fully taking advantage > of this (in Windows). For example, if you have a > higher-than-normal font DPI (eg 120) Workrave should scale its > windows. I haven't tested this recently. I had mixed results in > Windows Server 2003 and XP some time ago. If there is any > improvement in scaling forthcoming on Windows it will probably be > better DPI awareness, and it will probably be due to improvements > in GTK+ rather than Workrave itself. because as far as I have been able to determine, you can change the font size for the desktop icons, and window title bars, but anything else in windows must be changed by changing the screen resolution. [The fact that I think way to enlarge things is wrong, that most of the time I need large print, but occasionally would like to see detail with some magnifier, is irrelevant: Microsoft won't be doing anything based on my opinion.] > > Thanks, > > Ray Thank you, Hugh > > --- On Wed, 10/21/09, Hugh Sasse <hgs@...> wrote: > > From: Hugh Sasse <hgs[AT}dmu.ac.uk> > Subject: [Workrave-user] Workrave and XP magnifier. > To: Workrave-user[AT]lists.sourceforge.net > Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 5:53 AM > > Workrave has been imaged onto a machine I support. I have to use > the Windows magnifier (which you can bring up with <Windows-R> then > type magnify<return>, when it comes up press return to get rid of > the message about access software, <up-arrow> a few times to > increase the magnification to about 6, then <return> to minimize the > magnifier options window) in order to work with that display. > > When Workrave brings up the pre-break warning dialogue, it appears > over the magnifier window, and it is thus not magnified. Trying to > move the mouse over the window in order to see its contents results > in the window moving to the bottom of the screen. Moving the mouse > to the window's new position results on it moving back to the top of > the screen. How is one supposed to see the contents of this window > when using the magnifier? > > When the break dialogue comes up, there are no keyboard shortcuts > for it. There is also no help facility in it to find out what it > will do once the progress bar reaches the end. So far I have > managed to skip or postpone the thing before that happens. Given > that I can't see the mouse pointer on the screen without the > magnification, it is extremely difficult to navigate to wherever > this window comes up at short notice. > > I later noticed a really small window on the desktop, with a coffee > cup icon and a time (3:50 I think) in an entry box next to it, and a > couple of similar boxes below. I think this is part of the same > program. It is not possible to resize this window in order to see > the program name properly on the title bar, but it does begin with > "Wo". It is not possible to see from the exposed part of the window > whether the times are hours:minutes, or minutes:seconds. There seem > to be no tooltips to say what the icons are for, and no help facility. > > Someone pointed out a very small sheep icon on the taskbar, but the > tooltips for that don't mention the program name, only talking about > micro-breaks. > > Only by searching for micro-breaks using Google did I find out what > this program might be, and thus find that workrave is installed on > here. > > Is anyone able to reproduce this behaviour? > Are there any configuration files/tools to make this program more > accessible? > > Thank you, > Hugh > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > Workrave-user mailing list > Workrave-user@... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user > > > > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Kees-Jan Dijkzeul
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Hi Hugh,
Thanks for your e-mail. Let's start near the bottom. > I suggest that you think about the issuse in this Scientific American > article on Considerate Computing. > > http://interruptions.net/literature/Gibbs-SA05-0105054.pdf That was an interesting read, and I tend to agree with it. The user should be in control. Research has shown that taking a break helps preventing RSI. When requesting users to take a break, they should normally be balancing short time interests (do I want to take a break now) with long term interests (do I care about possibly acquiring RSI in the future). Research then shows that people tend to overly favor short-term interests. They will keep on working regardless of what it means for their health. Admittedly, I am one of those people, and I have suffered the consequences. To help people like that, Workrave is configured by default to take control of the system and force you to break. Hence, to allow for at least a little bit of "user control", Workrave should not do this unless the user has specifically requested it to do so. This is why the (main) user of the machine should decide whether or not to install and use workrave, and not someone else. I understand that your situation is different, but I don't think we are the right people to complain to. In my opinion, you should (also) complain to the people who installed Workrave, for giving you a machine you have less control over than you want to. > OK. Is it possible to avoid grabbing focus from another app, or to > give it back to that app pretty much immediately? That would allow > me to click on the window to access its controls if I need to, but > not otherwise. This is provided that the window doesn't run away > from the mouse. I'm not sure I fully understand your point. The window that is running away (we call it a "break prelude" or a "prelude" window) should not grab focus from your app. You should be able to continue to work normally. The window will go away after at most 30 seconds. Depending on how Workrave is configured, a break window may pop up. A break window may either grab focus and force you to break, or not grab focus and allow you to continue working, again depending on workrave's configuration. In the latter case, the break window will have a title-bar (currently listing the break-type, not the program name - we should look into that) > I think the following things would help considerably: > > 1 Make the name of the tool more prominent in the interface, allowing > one to find its files in C:\Program Files, and so on;. I think in doing so, the windows would become uglier. > 2 Provide a help button, which displays the contents of the README, > but with a little text saying what the application is for, and > telling people to look at the system tray for the sheep icon. > Pointing to the web is not enough, something Microsoft need to > learn about for their documentation: there are plenty of reasons > why the internet may not be reachable; That's something we could do, at least for the break windows. We'd have to be careful, though, since the point is to stop the user from using the computer, even if he doesn't want to :-) > 3 Provide some means which is also prominent of stopping the > application, still allowing it to restart at next login, or > whatever. I'm thinking of a stop button in the popup windows, > possibly with an "are you sure?" dialogue warning about the > risks of RSI, etc; There are "skip" and "postpone" buttons available in the break windows. Not in the prelude, but it doesn't interfere with your working and jump away anyway. > 4 Allow the resizing of the dialogue with the times in it. I'd > argue that all windows should be resizable because (for example > in safe mode) sometimes the resolution of the display is very low, > and windows won't fit on the screen. I have had this with > system windows which I could not close because the only close > or OK buttons were off the bottom of the screen when the window > was pushed up against the top. That's also something that could be done. Though I sincerly hope you're not proposing to reduce your display's resolution to the point the current status window doesn't fit any more :-) Groetjes, Kees-Jan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.
by Hugh Sasse
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On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Kees-Jan Dijkzeul wrote:
> Hi Hugh, > > Thanks for your e-mail. Let's start near the bottom. > > > I suggest that you think about the issuse in this Scientific American > > article on Considerate Computing. > > > > http://interruptions.net/literature/Gibbs-SA05-0105054.pdf > > That was an interesting read, and I tend to agree with it. The user > should be in control. > > Research has shown that taking a break helps preventing RSI. When > requesting users to take a break, they should normally be balancing > short time interests (do I want to take a break now) with long term > interests (do I care about possibly acquiring RSI in the > future). Research then shows that people tend to overly favor > short-term interests. They will keep on working regardless of what it > means for their health. Admittedly, I am one of those people, and I > have suffered the consequences. I agree with the above.... > > To help people like that, Workrave is configured by default to take > control of the system and force you to break. Hence, to allow for at > least a little bit of "user control", Workrave should not do this > unless the user has specifically requested it to do so. What happens to someone supporting a machine in which this has been configured? Sometimes such support takes place in the absence of the user, for various good reasons. Even Windows allows a screen to be unlocked by an administrator, in recognition of this reality.. > > This is why the (main) user of the machine should decide whether or > not to install and use workrave, and not someone else. I understand > that your situation is different, but I don't think we are the right > people to complain to. In my opinion, you should (also) complain to > the people who installed Workrave, for giving you a machine you have > less control over than you want to. I will do, but I can't do that until I have something I can offer them, like assurances that future versions will not be a problem, so they can afford to wait. > > > OK. Is it possible to avoid grabbing focus from another app, or to > > give it back to that app pretty much immediately? That would allow > > me to click on the window to access its controls if I need to, but > > not otherwise. This is provided that the window doesn't run away > > from the mouse. > > I'm not sure I fully understand your point. The window that is running > away (we call it a "break prelude" or a "prelude" window) should not > grab focus from your app. You should be able to continue to work > normally. The window will go away after at most 30 seconds. Depending No, I can't work normally if I can't see what is going on. It appears on top of the magnifier, and I can't see what is in it because it won't allow me to magnify it. I can't see how to configure how long that delay is, at the moment, either. > on how Workrave is configured, a break window may pop up. A break > window may either grab focus and force you to break, or not grab focus > and allow you to continue working, again depending on workrave's > configuration. In the latter case, the break window will have a > title-bar (currently listing the break-type, not the program name - we > should look into that) OK. Agreed that this one doesn't run away from the mouse. > > > I think the following things would help considerably: > > > > 1 Make the name of the tool more prominent in the interface, allowing > > one to find its files in C:\Program Files, and so on;. > > I think in doing so, the windows would become uglier. This is an accessibility issue. If you want it pretty, find a way to do that. I don't think one more line of text saying what the program is called, within the window, or a longer title bar, will hurt anyone. > > > 2 Provide a help button, which displays the contents of the README, > > but with a little text saying what the application is for, and > > telling people to look at the system tray for the sheep icon. > > Pointing to the web is not enough, something Microsoft need to > > learn about for their documentation: there are plenty of reasons > > why the internet may not be reachable; > > That's something we could do, at least for the break windows. We'd > have to be careful, though, since the point is to stop the user from > using the computer, even if he doesn't want to :-) The user who wants workrave will not keep clicking the help button, especially once they know what it says. The user who doesn't know what is going on needs a way to find out. Possible consequences of not being able to find out could include: "You were getting all these popups. You clearly had a virus. I reformatted your disk and installed Windows again. You'll have to get your personal files off your last backup." > > > 3 Provide some means which is also prominent of stopping the > > application, still allowing it to restart at next login, or > > whatever. I'm thinking of a stop button in the popup windows, > > possibly with an "are you sure?" dialogue warning about the > > risks of RSI, etc; > > There are "skip" and "postpone" buttons available in the break But it keeps coming back. There should be a button to turn if off completely. You may have to go through a dialogue of the "I really don't want you to do that, Dave" variety, but there should be some discoverable way to stop it interrupting. Access to that through minute icons in the system tray is no good: my central vision is such that I need a magnifier, my peripheral vision is lower resolution still, so I won't see anything going on down there. At least I don't have tunnel vision. Most of the time I forget about the system tray, and unless the icon is used thematically throughout the application I won't know that any there are relevant. > windows. Not in the prelude, but it doesn't interfere with your working The prelude IS interfering with my work, because it always comes up over the magnifier. It keeps doing so repeatedly. If this were a person doing that, it would be considered harassment. > and jump away anyway. > > > 4 Allow the resizing of the dialogue with the times in it. I'd > > argue that all windows should be resizable because (for example > > in safe mode) sometimes the resolution of the display is very low, > > and windows won't fit on the screen. I have had this with > > system windows which I could not close because the only close > > or OK buttons were off the bottom of the screen when the window > > was pushed up against the top. > > That's also something that could be done. Though I sincerly hope > you're not proposing to reduce your display's resolution to the point > the current status window doesn't fit any more :-) No, but I can's see what that window is all about because it has almost no text in it. If I could expand it there might be some I can look at. The icons in it have no tooltips. > > Groetjes, > > Kees-Jan > Thank you, Hugh > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > Workrave-user mailing list > Workrave-user@... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Workrave-user mailing list Workrave-user@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/workrave-user |
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