Tip-of-the-day window steals input even when another window has focus

2.9.20151111 OS X 10.10.5

For instance, I might get a tip about creating new keyboard shortcuts, and I may go to Prefs -> Keys to try it out. If I hit the + button and then see something else I want to check out first so I hit [esc] to close the sheet for new keyboard shortcuts, the [esc] input closes the tip-of-the-day window instead of the sheet, even though the field in the sheet has focus.

I've also had this happen when another app has focus. In both cases it is surprising.

Tip of the day intentionally grabs Esc globally because sometimes it comes up at an annoying time and you just want to get rid of it. I feel a little guilty about annoying the user with this so I want to make it really easy to dismiss.

I suspect what's needed is an easy way to open the tip of the day after closing it.

Milestone changed to Ship 3.0

Dup of #4107 (closed)

Status changed to closed

I understand the rationale for allowing the user to easily dismiss the Tip-of-the-Day window, but I think the current solution is less than optimal. Please consider a couple of other possible solutions:

• if the TOTD window only appeared when the iTerm app had focus, there would be a lower incidence of it coming at an annoying time
• if the the OS X notification system were used instead, the user could open the TOTD from the notification, the same way the respond to new e-mail or tweets. They would see that there's a new tip and they could either click on the notification alert or banner, or they could find it later in the notification area.
• if it is important for it to appear no matter what app the user is using, it could still relinquish focus if the user clicked on some other window.

The problem is not that the window receives an esc after it has appeared. The problem is that it will never ever ever give up focus. Even if I see the tip and think ("oh good! another tip—I'll check it out as soon as I'm doing with this..." I can't finish what I'm doing because my input goes to the the TOTD window instead of the window I've clicked on. So it's an all-or-nothing proposition. I either have to immediately give the TOTD window my complete focus (which is mentally jarring) or I have to immediately dismiss it completely, which is a problem because of #4107 (closed). I like the tips (even though I already know many of them—they're still good reminders of features I might not be using regularly yet) and I want to see them. But it would be much better if I could read them when it works for me, not whenever the window happens to appear.

Good points. Using notification center is problematic because it's limited in what it can do. Notifications are transient, and the tip of the day doesn't work if it gets buried. Commit 26b13a9 restricts it to appearing when iTerm2 is the active app, which should greatly reduce annoyance.

I also added a menu item to show the last tip again (iTerm2>Show Tip of the Day) in commit 7d7cfc10.

Status changed to reopened

Status changed to closed

I can't recall why I reopened this; I think the issues have all been addressed. It will only display while iTerm2 is active and you can use a menu item to revisit the last tip.