Re: Workrave and XP magnifier.

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


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