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Applications Stealing Focus...

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Renegade:
Stealing focus is something that really ticks me off. I can't count the number of times that I've been happily typing along when some application steals focus and I end up doing something very bad. Ok... It's not really THAT often, but when it happens, it can be disastrous.

At a minimum, there should be no default action for a window that steals focus. e.g. The space bar does nothing -- no "OK" and no "YES" or "Cancel" or anything like that.

Thoughts?

mouser:
you should clarify -- you mean applications that "pop up" unexpectedly and take focus.  not applications that come up when called.  right?

mouser:
The tricky thing is that if they don't take focus, you have to actually switch to them to dismiss/handle them if they don't take focus.. so i'm not sure that the alternative is any better.  maybe something like a sound and delay should proceed a pop up so it can steal focus but still give you warning to stop typing.. i don't know..

justice:
there should be a focus queue (maybe with shortcut) and some visual /audio notification. like a system tray balloon + unique sound, there's software needing your attention click here or press ctrl-shift-alt-caps :P I don't think you should disable keyboard handlers for dialogue boxes though, they should just not get focus until the user tells them to. that's how i see it.

mwb1100:
Jeff Atwood did a recent blog entry about this:  http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001011.html

His wrap-up line sums it up nicely:

... please don't steal my focus. I'm using it right now. Really. I am.
--- End quote ---

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