I've recently gave a try to Awesome 3 RC5. Again, like in my last attempt, I was forced to bail out.

I decided to try it at work because it is the place where I need the less applications. I mostly use a few terminal with Emacs to edit and Opera to browse. I also still use VMware, and yes, the problem I described last time is still present. I already admitted it was just an annoyance so this time I decided this would not stop me from at least trying to use Awesome productively.

I lasted roughly 2 days and a half before I was forced to admit defeat and move back to OpenBox. I don't believe there are any formal studies done on that, but I feel getting used to a software graphic interface needs at least two step:

1. First is getting used to the controls, and being able to find its way into the interface. This might be short or not depending on the complexity of the said interface.
2. The second step is becoming productive in the same interface.

The steps can probably overlap, ie, you can probably become productive with an interface without knowing the full feature set of the interface, but you need a basic understading of the features before becoming productive.

I can say that after 1 day, I was well in my way into step 2 of my learning. What really helped is that Awesome defaults are well choosen and easy to learn. In fact, I quickly felt the need to rebind some controls, which is something you can't really before thinking you might be more productive if you move some bindings around on the keyboard.

I had already done that after a day or two. In fact, I actually rebound the Caps Lock key to be my modifier key for the WM. That was pretty cool actually.

Everything went fine until I started to know the key good enough to stop thinking that I was using a WM. At this moment, I found myself continually typing in the wrong window. My brain could not at any moment, know which window had the focus. Everything I switched window, or moved window around, I had to stop, for perhaps 1/10 of a second, and check which window was highlighted.

Before surrendering to the familiar OpenBox, I asked people of the #awesome IRC channel for their opinion on my problem. The simplest trick I've seen was to edit the theme so that the focused window border was of a bright color. I did set the border to be thick and red, but to no avail. Other suggestions were either not applicable to all windows, or would have required compizmgr, something with which I have no competence.

The problem is certainly not specific to Awesome. Any tiling window manager will probably lead to me typing in the wrong windows all the time.

I'm a little annoyed by this problem. With WM dealing with overlapped window, it's obvious that that the top-most window is the window that has the focus. My working style with WM is usually to have a few (2 or 3) windows opened inside a single virtual desktop. I toggle between them using Alt+Tab. Windows are really side-by-side each other will overlap 95% of the time. I have not stopped to see how I work the remaining 5% of the time. Do I type in the wrong window? I honnestly can't say yes or know. When you work day to day, very quickly, with windowing environment, its the kind of thing you may not realize happens when it doesn't really slow you down.

I'm off Awesome for a while now. I'm not ready to make it replace my working environment any time soon. Still, Awesome is really awesome. I recommend to everyone that is curious about tiling window managers to try it before any other. It's just a personnal problem that I find myself incapable of using it.