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Applications Stealing Focus...
Armando:
yes.
steeladept:
This gave me what I think would be an awesome idea for an application...I find most focus stealing applications downright evil and feel your pain for those of you who mentioned it. Try having that happen in a mainframe session where it is time critical AND location/type sensitive! It is horrible and can cost companies millions if not caught. That said, certain notifications practically require it so that they can actually do what is intended - namely notify you. Many people talk about the popup balloon being the best alternative, but I think that is crap. It slows everything and stutters your screen if you are lucky, otherwise it is just as bad as any popup (sometimes worse as you can't always dismiss it).
Given all these things, my thought is this. Create an app that puts a border around the edge of the screen. Make it variable size, variable colors, whatever... The goal of this border is to do a few things. 1) Make an unobtrusive border that the application fills the inside of in full screen mode and windows like normal in non-full screen mode. 2) It should intercept all focus theft attempts and redirect them as a flash of the border to notify the user without actually stealing the focus. Seriously, I don't know how much of this is doable, but it really makes the most sense to me. Any ideas? Takers?
Armando:
I find that an interesting idea... Or why not instead have the title bar of the current active window flash + a horizontally scrolling note (on the bar) describing the event wanting to steal focus ? (most application have a title bar... that way, you don't loose screen estate)
app103:
There is another way that applications steal focus, and it's just as evil...
Do not flash my taskbar button unless you are going to give me the option to turn that feature off.
If you have a hidden taskbar (like me), when the button flashes it causes the taskbar to unhide and stick till the flashing button is clicked by the user. It doesn't matter if you make the button flash once, 3 times, or keep flashing till the user clicks...the taskbar will still lock itself in the open position till the button is clicked.
If you have seen my taskbar, you will know why I hate the button flashing.
It makes multi-tasking damn near impossible.
Yahoo Messenger and GTalk are the worst offenders of this.
Just imagine this:
I am working on a project when someone messages me on Yahoo or GTalk... Taskbar flies out halfway across my screen, covering my work till I click the button and bring the message window to the front. I reply to the person and go back to work. A few seconds later it all repeats when they have something else to say to me.
I'd like to be able to have a conversation AND work...not choose one or the other.
There is no way to completely turn off button flashing in Windows, despite what people may think. With TweakUI our options are to flash once, flash x number of times, keep flashing, or let application steal focus. (all of these are unacceptable)
There are other options a developer can use to get my attention than stealing focus or flashing the titlebar and/or taskbar button.
* Make some noise.
* Pop up a tiny image in the corner of my screen that will not steal focus.
Again, these should all be OPTIONS.
And don't use tray balloons, as these have the same effect as the flashing button and I have turned that off.
J-Mac:
I couldn't agree more, app103. Most with tray balloons don't have an option to turn them off. E.g., NOD32. Everytime it updates definitions it pops a tray balloon up - sometimes a dozen or more a day. And if I am away from my PC for a few hours and it updated 6 or 8 times, it pops up that many times in a row; as soon as I close one the next pops, and the next...
Aarrgghh!!
Jim
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