When certain subwindows/sidebars/dialogs are open, a single click anywhere else in the UI does not do the expected thing, which would be to open/view whatever you clicked on; Instead the first click just closes the current subwindow/dialog, and a SECOND click is required in the exact same place, to open the thing you clicked on.
This leads to much UI weirdness, such as:
After opening an entity view in the sidebar by Alt-clicking a reference-type cell in a Table View; now Alt-clicking a different reference cell in the Table View does NOT open that entity in the Sidebar; it simply closes the Sidebar (even though the hover hint over the cell says “ALT + Click” will open it). But regular-clicking on a cell WILL close the sidebar AND execute the click.
The same thing happens in the Apps and Templates page when a Type is currently being edited: clicking a different Type does not edit that type; it just closes the current entity’s definition in the right side of the screen.
I understand the frustration here, but I think I also get why it works the way it does. Pop-up views are treated as “modals”, basically. So while the feature request makes sense, it might be more correct to say something like “make entity views non-modal” or something.
I also think this will probably be affected, at least in some/many cases (e.g. entity views), by the forthcoming:
These Fibery “modals” generally do not adhere to the “Explicit Save is required, or else closing it cancels all changes” behavior, and their modal status doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. And sometimes they don’t behave like modals at all – in my above example, regular-clicking a Table View cell DOES close the sidebar AND execute the click (which is what I want, only with more consistency).
Modals are a PITA if not actually required. I would much rather have them be active, independent windows/panes – and hopefully that’s where we’re headed with Multi-panel context-preserving navigation.
Either way, once you’ve accepted that clicking outside the thing dismisses it, it’s not a stretch to dismiss it and activate your click-target in a single operation.
Personally I think the hit to usability (the double-takes of having to click twice) far outweighs the benefit of adhering to a standard modal pattern that that’s not serving any purpose. Innovators create new UI/UX patterns every day, and I’m glad they are, else we’d all be using Windows 3.1 UI.