"We recognize that the majority of your time is spent chatting while doing other things in parallel, and one of our goals was to make this easier to do, and less fraught with errors. Have you ever jumped wildly when you were trying to chat, or said "wwwasdeeeeccf"? We're hoping to make that happen less often by allowing you to keep your chat bar open, and move keyboard input around with ease."
Until you started playing with the focus, a few updates back, I never jumped wildly while I was trying to chat, or said "wwwwasdeeeeeccf". Because I always used the arrow keys for movement, and text for chat. There are two major input models for Second Life, one in which you switch between "chat mode" and "player mode" and one in which you stay in one mode, and use the mouse and keyboard and menus all together all the time.
In the first mode, you have to either be chatting, or doing stuff.
In the second mode, you don't distinguish the two.
In changing the user interface to make it a little easier for people who are used to the first mode to work in the second mode, you've made people who are already happily IN the second mode completely unable to function. You're increasing the "jumping around" hundreds of times.
I'm really worried that this new user interface will become required, and will drive me out of SL. I don't want to leave, this isn't a threat, it's just a worry... I can't see how I can deal with a world where everyone's a "store dummy" and you're either "doing stuff" or "chatting" instead of doing both at once.
There's a preferences option for whether arrow keys work in chat or not.