Great post on "insecure" software who always need your attention.

I do wonder however, if IE7 already fixed the download thing with their non-intrusive notification bar? Have been using FF almost exclusively.

We don't need no pop-up windows,
We don't need no modal box,
No focus-stealing bad behaviour,
Coders leave my apps alone,
Hey! Coders! Leave my apps alone.

Better question - where did all the work go towards allowing updates to install without requiring a reboot? There was an initiative on the server side to minimize that back in the early part of the decade during my days at MSFT. It seems like every other Vista update requies me to update. I'm left wondering if it's really about replacing files in use, or could they have given me the option to close applications while something restarts on the PC.

Switch to Mac OS X :-)

Right, I was wondering about what's going on with this focus issue, too. It works like you said - OS mostly prevents stealing focus but sometimes it doesn't and when it doesn't and one is typing a disaster might occur.
I hope someday this is fixed for good because the problem is really annoying.

Once, I wanted to close a windows with Alt-F4, when another window came stole the focus.

She got what she deserved, and was killed. Nobody stands in my keyboard line-of-fire and lives to tell the tale :)

"I'm wondering if it's because badly behaved programmers ..."

It's not always badly behaved programmers. It's quite often badly behaved customers.

I speak from experience.

Can happen to mousers too - if you have''SmartMove' enabled (obviously, they made the reboot now button the default!).

This will keep happening on Windows, because Windows apps are in direct control of their... well... windows. Linux apps are just as obnoxious (Thunderbird is killing me...), but I can always override them from the window manager. Focus stealing is still allowed by default, though. Talk about misguided programmers.

Focus stealing has been the bane of my computer existence for a great number of years, and I have only ever had one question:

Who ever thought it as a good idea, and why????

Perhaps someone who uses a Mac (I don't) can confirm this, but it's my understanding that apps can't steal the focus on OSX. If this is true, surely it's been fixed at an OS level - which leads me to the next question: why does Windows allow apps to steal the focus? Why not just force apps to flash the taskbar instead? I've been burned by this many a time...

Visual Studio help suffers from similar problems. At times it decides the best course of action is to steal my focus while I'm typing in my search query - because it is loading online help!?. Clicking back on the input field clears your query so you have to type it again. While typing my query for the second time "help" decides to refresh the online help pane and steals my focus again...

I've learned to open the help window at the start of my day - and close it at reboot :)

I agree, focus stealing is incredably annoying.

If you start some application and then try to edit a word document or an email while you wait, the other application invariably pops up without warning in the middle of a keystroke.

Didn't AmigaOS get this right 20 years ago?

at least it's not modal.

I actually catch myself screaming to my computer to "Stop stealing focus!!!" out loud sometimes. Web browsers especially seem to exhibit this trait.

I've cursed the programmers responsible for more than a few apps (and websites!) numerous times, myself. I just can't understand how they can think this is a good idea. I've actually experienced something similar to the situation you described with data corruption myself; it left me quite literally shaking with apoplectic rage when I found out.

I've lost work, typed passwords into the clear on public computers, the lot. Personally, I think anyone caught writing code that does this should have their crops burned and the land salted, be dragged into the street, flogged, shot, and then flogged again for good measure.

Sorry; kinda touched a nerve on that one. This sits on the annoyance scale just slightly above "system dialogs that you can't ever really close" and "system notifications that cannot be dismissed without opening the program."

The worst part is that the most common cause of these problems is the OS (and its utilities) itself, rather than some 3rd party coders using certain settings to get in your way. Generally, I can get rid of the more troublesome 3rd party software by using another program with less annoying behavior. Switching to Mac OS, on the other hand, requires so many hacks that possibly wouldn't work on my computer, or buying a new computer, so that it's not really an option at this point.

Stuart: see above. Windows doesn't "allow" applications to steal the focus. Windows can't *stop* them from stealing the focus.

Here's my example of completely unnecessary and very annoying focus stealing:

With my laptop I got Roxio CD Creator. It includes an update checker which runs in the background every now and then. The annoying thing is that when it goes to check for an update, it first pops up a focus stealing message "I need to check for updates!". And then, a few minutes later, "There are no updates right now!".

Totally stupid. I don't need to know when the program is going to check for updates, it should do that in the background without attracting attention. And when there are no updates, I don't want to know that too.

Many companies / programmers overestimate the amount of attention they need to attract from the user. They think that their software is the center of the world and that the user is interested in every little thing that the software does.

Have you ever installed Norton Antivirus? I does an even worst thing than stealing your focus, it pops up window like this:

"Click OK to restart you computer"

The problem is that the damn window just have the OK button.

I just dragged the window to a corner once and left it there... guess what.. forgot about it.. and when I was doing a very important thing and didn't save, the window just stole the focus and acidentally I hit Enter... the computer restarted and I lost some work -_-

I think this annoying problem should be solved by OS, if any active window is getting keystrokes, it should not lost focus within a timeout.

In urgent cases, modal forms may be started displaying transparent and inactive, then get opaque slowly and finally activate if there are not any keystrokes.

The most annoying case of focus stealing I can think of is Live Messenger. I often start it while doing something else as it takes some time to start. SUddenly it steals the focus. I then restore focus to the app I was working in... and it steals the focus again!! And if you are so unlucky that you have any offline messages waiting it will steal the focus a third time.

At least there are no fatal results from typing with Messenger in focus.

Stealing is bad and blah, blah, blah, but ... Do you know that the 90%+ users of windows will never reboot (or do anything, no matter if the taskbar is flashing or a new icon appear in the tray bar) unless they are forced to?

I guess MS was forced to this solution by "security" experts, because the previous version was not like that.

another reason not to use windows...
and especially not internet exporer!

I'm amused to note that every example in Jeff's post (and several in the comments) is a MICROSOFT product. The auto-update thing. The IE download window. Visual Studio. You'd think that they'd send a company wide memo at some point saying 'No app shall steal the bloody focus!'. Or something.

Sigh.

This has happened to me too many times, my least favourite one though was where Automatic Update would pop up a dialog that was a 5 minute countdown to a reboot.

I often disappear from my computer for a brief period which was always longer than 5 minutes, leaving my computer exactly as is, and not hitting Ctrl-S on the way out, which means by the time I got back to my computer I had lost all my changes.

Ok this is probably my own fault to some degree, but I was usually thinking about the problem and would normally come back with the solution and then have to start from scratch again. And there was usually a good reason for not saving changes.

At least they have seen sense and stopped this one, well at least on my computers!

And I agree with Goran, VS help is really annoying.

Rob

"Do you know that the 90%+ users of windows will never reboot (or do anything, no matter if the taskbar is flashing or a new icon appear in the tray bar) unless they are forced to?"

Surely a toast notification that doesn't go away unless explicitly dismissed would go most of the way? People still don't restart if it pops up in front of them anyway, they just click "Restart Later" because they're in the middle of something. Then they forget. Then they do something else and it pops up in the middle of it again.

I have to say I've not really been bitten by attention seeking apps that much recently. Maybe I've just become immune to it and so haven't noticed.

Raymond Chan has an amusing story about two apps that *really* wanted focus, so every 5 seconds made sure they were on top. Run them together and they would flip every few seconds.

Well, the Windows update notification functionality is a prime example of how not to implement a notification system.

First, it has the behaviour described in your post, and it also has _no_ way whatsoever to control it. You can only tell it to restart now, or "later". What does "later" mean? In this case, about 10 minutes. And then it's the same story all over again.

In Vista this is a little bit better. But not much. It's still the same principle. You can now tell it to remind you up to 4 hours later. But still not "Never!". I really don't see why...

Ubuntu does it quite well. It just says "You need to restart your computer for some of the changes to take effect.". That's all that's needed really. Why shouldn't the user be capable of restarting the computer herself?

All in all, there are extremely few cases where this functionality even is motivated at all. I wonder what they thought when they implemented it.

Acrobat used to steal focus on OSX...

Sort of related, OSX and Windows both handle shutting down in completely opposite but both completely annoying ways: OSX, it's too easy for an application to cancel the shutdown process with a stupid question or taking too long to close. Windows, once you have started the shutdown process unless you are quick with Command Prompt, there is no stopping it, no matter how many apps are open and whether or not they have saved their progress.

"sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

Hah! That one's going in my personal quotes list. Beautiful update of Arthur C. Clarke.

This is another example of what drives me crazy about Microsoft products. You have some behavior that everybody agrees is bad. Microsoft finally says, "OK, it is bad, we'll fix it". They "fix" it, but it still happens a lot. Several Windows versions later, we take it as a win if it happens rarely instead of all the time. Arrrggghhhh...

> " With my laptop I got Roxio CD Creator. It includes an update checker which runs in the background every now and then. The annoying thing is that when it goes to check for an update, it first pops up a focus stealing message "I need to check for updates!". And then, a few minutes later, "There are no updates right now!". "

My Logitech Mouse software does the same thing.

I/ think it should be legal to kill the entire project team and it's family to the third degree for eveery single app that exhibits that kind of behavior. and i'm stating it softly.

X hasn't been mentioned yet, so I thought I'd mention it.

With X, the application which gets focus is down to the X server, not the application. The window manager generally acts as guardian of the focus - deciding whether or not windows should be given it.

This works beautifully in, for example, KDE, where the focus-stealing problem simply doesn't exist.

I fear the only way to fix this in Windows is with a redesign of the way windows are handled which would break all existing applications, so don't expect to see a solution in the next couple of decades.

@kris: A post your mother and high school teacher would be proud of.

One of the old MMOs I used to play (Rubies of Eventide) would log you out of the game if you alt tabbed, supposedly to prevent cheating. This was back in the days when web browsers on windows would steal focus back any time a script on the page reloaded.

I died so many times to those damn page reloads.

Ever thought of choosing a window manager ?

Lotus Notes does this too and really annoys me. It happens when a meeting notification or reminder pops up. Now this is a good idea because I'd probably miss all my meetings otherwise, but if it is going to pop up, why not disable the input for a second or so to give the user time to see the pop-up. It has happened to me time and time again. I have been happily typing away and then the pop up comes .... and goes with out me seeing what it was. So I have to then go to my calendar and then my to-do list to try and figure out what the pop up could have been . And by the time I have done that, I forget what I was writing about in the first place!! And then there are times when there is more than one notification in the same box, but I don't know this until I get a call asking why I'm not at a meeting! A bit of common sense is all it takes in these situations to get the point across and not mess the rest of my day up! At least this doesn't reboot the machine though! I've got to agree though, the Restart Now/Later is the worst. Happened to me last night - bought something on the web and had the receipt page in front of me. Asked to restart now/later and chose later as I wanted to print my receipt. But then I had a problem with the printer, so I ran upstairs to sort that out and when I came back the machine had rebooted by itself, due to the countdown timer, which is the worst part of that dialog. OK, I need to reboot and ask me if I want to if you like. But don't automatically reboot if I don't answer after 5 minutes!! I'm obviously not paying attention, doing something else and I might just have something of worth on my screen at the time. Now I have no receipt for my purchase :-( Not good.

Google Talk, the least user-friendly desktop app from Google, throws a window in my face whenever someone wants to ping me. Live Messenger, on the other hand, simply flashes a window button in the taskbar.

IE downloads stealing focus... that is one of the reasons I stopped using it. No other browser copies to a temp directory then moves the file. I've had IE kill far too many 1 gig+ files to deal with that ever again.

Considering the major crook here is the automatic updater in Windows, a truly frustrating thing, I doubt the blame is to lay on third-parties or dismal programmers. It's most likely a concious decision based on the assumption that the end-user doesn't know what's best for him unless it's shoved down his throat.

For those living with it I can recommend the earlier post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000294.html

Can't say I've experienced this with Linux though earlier commenter Felix Pleşoianu seems to suggest it can be an issue for some. At the very least you don't live with the automatic updater and live messenger.

The programmers can be bad ugly bastards, for all I care. If I use TweakUI and check on "don't let programs steal focus", and it still happens, Microsoft is to blame.

I lost count years ago of the number of times that I rebooted while writing an email or programming after a stupid reboot window from a driver, game, program or whatever installation poped up unexpectedly.

Also, why is it that 95% of the programs ask you to reboot when they finish installing?. Most of them don't even touch the registry or your D&S or S32 directories, just copy some files in a folder, put a shortcut in the start menu, and that's it!

Bad programming, yeah, but Microsoft should be the one protecting us against it (yeah, wishful thinking, I know)

Maybe we could all chip in and buy Microsoft a decent SCM tool?

Of course, using modal dialog boxes isn't always A Bad Thing(tm) - sometimes, especially when you're responding to user input a modal dialog box is okay.

It's when focus stealing dialog boxes are spawned without any prompting from the user...

GMail now does this, actually. It jumps to the front when it finished loading. Incredibly annoying on my slow home connection; I tend to end up accidentally closing it half the time.

A somewhat related annoyance, and I'm not sure who's to blame (the OS or individual program): blinking cursors in text input fields (e.g. password), even though the window doesn't have focus. Multiple messenger windows tend(ed) to be bad about this. (Admittedly I'm a bad typist, so I don't neccessarily look at the screen when I type.)

@Daniel

There crops burned and there field salted.
Suddenly, finaly I understand what happend to Cartage.
They stole focus from the Roman empire ;)

paktep wrote: "Also, why is it that 95% of the programs ask you to reboot when they finish installing?. Most of them don't even touch the registry or your D&S or S32 directories, just copy some files in a folder, put a shortcut in the start menu, and that's it!"

That's because they need to replace files which are in use. Windows doesn't let you replace application binaries which are being used by a running process.

I believe Windows uses the position of binaries in order to perform some optimisation (leave some code out of RAM but have the option to load it later?) but I'm not certain this is the reason - or the main reason - why you're not allowed to replace such files.

Hey Now Jeff,
I couldn't agree w/ you more. It happens often to me with outlook reminders & I get frustrated.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

AttatchThreadInput is usually abused in order to workaround the flashing taskbar intercept that Microsoft added to SetForegroundWindow

@David Dawkins: Get a sense of humour

It drives me *nuts* when programs do this. At the very least, it should n't ever happen when I'm playing a game full-screen. I play EUO, a multiplayer online game based on the old Ultima games, and I'm tired of having my character killed and my quests interrupted because someone IMed me or my antivirus wanted to let me know everything is a-ok.

If I have an app running full-screen, it's because I want to give it my full attention. I'm really surprised Windows allows this.

People used to get random bits of code over AIM from me occasionally. Other people weren't as lucky, like one who sent his überpassword (as everything at University used the same password) to a random friend.

I think the problem is that programmers hate timeouts because they make things more complex. So code doesn't get written to worry about these things.

Akira, you're absolutely right about IE downloading to a temp folder and then copying it. Yes, its focus stealing behaviour here is not acceptable, but the real problem is that it shouldn't need to present that notification in the first place. Just do it the way Firefox does it, and download to a temp filename in the selected directory, and then rename the file when the download is complete. This is item #1 on my "Why I don't use IE" list.

"Leave me alone!! I'm reading Coding Horror!!" I pressed the "restart later" button. Oops. This IS the blog. Silly me.

I have a couple applications that steal the focus repeatedly during startup. One has a splash screen that steals focus to tell me things like "Loading DLLs" and "Loading scripts" and "Loading preferences".

Designers may steal focus for their dialogs because they've encountered dialogs that get behind the main application window and can never be accessed again. Too many times I've killed a "non-responsive" app to find a dialog hiding behind it. My team even wrote one of these back in PowerBuilder days.

Splash screens are another evil. Lotus Notes has one that's Always On Top, can't be moved, can't be sized. I really want to sit and stare at this thing for half a minute. Not.

Pet Peeve: The Google home page, best designed page on the internet, etc., etc., will internally steal focus inside your browser. If you are typing in the address bar while the Google home page loads, the last half of your url will get entered into Google. It's rather frustrating.

I've never thought about it before, but is this why the "OK" button on Firefox download dialogs is disabled for the initial few seconds? So you won't mistakenly hit enter right away?

I just wish the reboot now or window had a "NEVER ASK ME EVER F**KING AGAIN" checkbox. Because, ya know, I'd check it.

>Have you ever installed Norton Antivirus?....acidentally I hit Enter...
>the computer restarted and I lost some work -_-

So use the free Grisoft AVG anti-virus software. It never does that, it never seems to require a reboot, and it's free. (I've had viruses in the past which have caused less damage than I've heard Norton causes!)

Jeff, I've noticed this trend more frequently on websites as well. The classic "Welcome Ad" redirect, or an advertisement that "expands" over the text you are trying to read.

In my book the worst offender is the "online survey" You're in the middle of doing something, and the survey interrupts you to ask how "usable" the site is...

start -> run -> cmd
shutdown -a
be quick about it and you might just save yourself some pain.

Mac OS X and Focus:

Mac OS X can have dialog boxes that steal the focus and in fact insist that you must take care of them before anything else. Just like in Windows.

However, Mac OS X also has another trick where windows that require your attention are attached to the top of the main window that generated the dialog box. The most obvious example is the print dialog box or the save dialog box. These dialog boxes also don't prevent you from moving or minimizing the window of the application either.

The problem in Windows is that dialog boxes that need your attention can get hidden by the window that generates them unless you steal the focus. I've used one or two applications where the main window is on top of the dialog box, and I cannot move or close that window which means I cannot close the dialog box that is locking the window.

So, bad programs in Mac OS X can steal your focus, but at least Mac OS X offers developers an alternative and better behaved way of handling the dialog box. I was actually surprised that this feature wasn't incorporated into Vista.

Well, to at least get rid of the auto-reboot feature, and probably that dialog - it can't hurt to hit up the Group Policy Editor

Hit Start-Run - gpedit.msc
Then head to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Update
Set "No Auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations" to ENABLED!

I'm cool with Automatic Updates, but there are some more tweaks here in that panel, so you can customize to your liking.

Gee, why was that buried?

Whoops. Missed a step. Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update.

You need a 'preview post' button. :<

Ugh, at the company I used to work for we used HP (Formerly Novadigm) Radia software management err... software.

It has this fantastic behaviour on laptops where upon the first network connectivity of the day, it'd begin to check (silently, in the background) for updates to the software catalogue.
If any of those updates required a reboot, it would display a prompt going something like "Radia needs to reboot your computer to complete the software update [OK] [Cancel]", with OK default selected. Ofcourse, unless you knew the specific signs to look for (msiexec processes spawning in quiet/silent mode for instance) - you never knew to be aware that an update was downloading/installing.

The shutdown process that it used was one of the more direct methods too. So, if you are like me and tend to stay logged in for days/weeks at a time and quite often have dozens of applications open simultaniously - you know the way Windows responds when it suddenly has to load all these paged applications off the disk. Combine that with a half-dozen "Do you want to save this?" requests - there was simply no way to ensure you were saving/not saving the correct things before suddenly all running foreground apps were killed and the session logged off.

I've lost countless hours due to the stupid behaviour of this software. Not necessarily in lost code - just time taken waiting for all your apps to open up again to where you need them.

It seems like chat/IM clients do this all the time. ICQ, GAIM, Pidgen and GroupwiseIM have all stolen the focus. I have typed all kinds of sensitive information including passwords into IM windows that open in the far corner of a multi-monitor setup.

There is probably a configuration setting for most of these that could change the behavior, but it shouldn't be the default in the first place.

Wow, if I haven't had the "stop stealing my focus" argument with iCal lately. This is probably one of the most annoying things about working with a mac.

I do want to be prompted when an event happens, but is prompting the ONLY solution? With iCal, if you desire to be prompted, then there is a focus stealing, non-minimizable alert box that pops up in front of whatever you are doing and will not go away until you click on it. You can move it, type behind it, etc, but it still sits there and interrupts your wokflow.

I personally like how Outlook alerts of new messages - a customizable, slowly fading and appearing in a non-critical area of the screen. Even a taskbar item that begins flashing or wailing would be better for me.

I live with Lotus Notes. It pops up calendar reminders for when meetings are going to occur - useful. It grabs focus - infuriating. I type fast; I don't see my calendar reminders. Suffice to say it is one of the major bugbears with that. And Notes is not alone...

But you knew that - you'd read the article.

Thanks, Jeff.

Nobody has mentioned my favorite offender: Outlook. It forces itself to the front at least twice during startup. WTF. My email and calendar are not so important that I need to be forced to look at them. I will look at them when I'm ready, thank you very much.

(Yes, I use Thunderbird for most mail, but I have to use Outlook for the company calendar.)

Oh how i have had this a million fscking times, or leaving the computer overnight to come back to it rebooted and me going "where did my code i left open go!?!"

windows is no longer installed on this computer and that was a major reason why! damm you microsoft!

I've been complaining about this for years. On Windows, when you starting an application, like Word, then switch to another while the application loads, Word steals focus when it finishes.

This is severely annoying. I don't remember Gnome ever doing this. I'm using a Mac now, and it doesn't steal focus, except for Microsoft applications like Word and Excel.

Gah!! It's so frustrating.

Thanks, Jeff, for making me feel validated.

Unfortunately, those in charge of the Firefox update download dialog need a lesson in this. More than a dozen times I have been typing something into a web form and the dialog displays. When that happens, I press the space bar before I know what is happening. The end result is that Firefox begins downloading its new version and installs it. It's a great tactic to make sure the browser is kept up to date, but it makes me want to do my best to disable update checking in its config. Has the opposite effect of what it's supposed to do, really.

@Rick Hemsley

Sounds like KDE got it right.

Unfortunately the GTK developers (or is it Gnome, I never really know who to blame) don't understand, don't *want* to understand, that this is important. Focus stealing comes up occasionally on the GTK (Gnome?) forums, but there just isn't any acceptance that this really is a problem that needs to be fixed in the platform itself, not in every single application. The existing "focus stealing prevention" setting doesn't work. I don't remember that this was ever a problem when I used twm or ctwm or fvwm...

The single worst offender on my Vista and XP machine(s) is the Apple updater (Safari, Quicktime and iTunes)! And why can't I update Quicktime without installing iTunes? There is not a single pop-up, updater, etc that is as offensive as the Apple updater in my opinion. You MS bashing, Apple lovers make me laugh... while they still don't advertise their products on the basis of the feature set, functionality, etc... at least they have changed their ad campaigns from being based only on bashing their competition. Probably because Leopard is throwing 'blue screens'!

Oh, focus stealing can be worse than that.
http://bash.org/?4848

Speaking of IE and stealing focus. That has to be my current biggest pet peeve about any software that I use routinely. I have to assume I am not the only person who has participated in the race where you are trying to type something in the IE address bar while it is loading a web page. If you are quick enough to get it all typed in before the new page starts loading, if not you will have to repeatedly click back on the address bar to take the focus off the loading page. Combined with the unfortunate UI design choice in IE7 to make the stop button tiny and in a place that is hard to spot it makes for a frustrating experience. I still haven't tuned my motor skills to find and click that browser stop button quickly. Aren't stop buttons supposed to be giant red buttons that you can't avoid looking at if you wanted to?

I often discover, usually just as I press Enter, that half the text I thought I'd typed in the search box at the top of Firefox has ended up in the address box instead. Dunno what's up with Firefox to steal focus between UI components like this, but it's damn irritating.

I hope the authors of Pidgin are reading this.........
Stupid thing steals focus like crazy; it's rather embarassing when I'm typing code in an IDE, and find myself sending it off to someone in an IM instead!

I have to admit though: It's almost funny when they know nothing about coding, and think their PC just went berserk. ;-)

This reminded me of something I saw on something awful:
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9930/qirexho2.jpg
(slightly edited to be family-friendly)

Yes, KDE did get it right. Or more accurately, kept the old, correct, behaviour from prior window managers.

It's kind of depressing that the vast majority of computer users (Windows and Mac) have to put up with such moronically mis-designed window management schemes that aggravate and confuse them every single day. The fact that MS apps can steal focus on OSX means that OSX is half-baked, not just that MS apps are crappy.

There's a delicious irony that X, not exactly known through the years for its "user-friendliness", gets this important thing right where the mainstream OS's get it so wrong.

Oh well, there's hope yet for Windows yet if MS ever decide to do what Apple did and just run win32 binaries in little VM's, and do one better and implement a sane X-style window manager to contain them.

Yes it is annoying when someone steals the focus. For example when I start Windows and launch 2 applications, the other application shows up first. That is ok, but then just as I went into flow, the other application shows at the top of the other. That is quite interrupting, even though the applications don't take ages to start.

Some applications have even some focus bugs. For example that when the application has finished downloading an update, the confirmation dialog shows up behind the application window and I have to find it from there when I have used to that all confirmation dialogs do show up in front. Also some confirmation dialogs throw me out of fullscreen games.

One point of view about focus is distraction. If the software is so bad, that you have to search modifications, fixes, or manuals for it, you are distracted from your work. And if I don't find what I am looking for or the mod doesn't work, I get frustrated and start searching for feedback channel. If I don't see any feedback channel either, then I start to burn my nerves and need to calm down. And finally, when I send the feedback and nothing happens, that doesn't look good either.

They have a fix for this: Linux! Seriously, in KDE (probably Gnome also) you can toggle the level of focus stealing. Mine is at the highest level (of non-focus stealing) so that even when you open a window, it's put in the background, so that it loads and patiently waits for it's master the way a good computer program should. Not like in Windows, where if I open 4 firefox windows I get interrupted 3 times as each one opens.

This focus problem is probably my single greatest pet peeve in Windows computing.

Bilgehan wrote "Switch to Mac OS X :-)"

I did. It may not steal the focus too much, but I've still had to reboot for a lot of software updates. Not so much in the last couple of months, but it was about once a week at one point between iTunes and system updates.

I thought OSX dialog sheets were stupid at first, but then I realised you could move the window below them unlike many Windows apps. On the other hand I sometimes want to move the sheet dialog.

I also wish the Cocoa buttons with spacebar focus were more distinct looking from other buttons.

oh yeah, and in MS Outlook I've often tried to double-click the envelope in the system tray to open my new mail and nothing happens. Then it can sometimes take a minute to find the dialog telling me that Outlook has a dialog box open and I should close it and try again (Exposé would be cool here). The offending dialog was asking me if I wanted to archive my old mail it had been hidden behind my other windows. Surely it should have come into focus when I clicked the systray envelope instead of opening another dialog and hiding it behind everything too.

Javascript alerts. I even have a solution to it, though it involves sidebar bloat.

Matlab is one of the most annoying applications in this respect. If you are running a long script that generates any graphics, it will steal the focus EACH TIME it generates one. If you've done any serious matlab work, you know that there are often jobs that run for great lengths of time. During the time it is generating graphical output - it will continually engage the user in a tug-of-war for the focus. But that's not the most annoying behavior.

If a script errors out, it WILL NOT return focus to the application (unless the debugger stop on errors is enabled). The one time you really want to be bothered - it won't bother you.

To me, it's not just pop ups and dialogs.

I know my computer is slow at certain applications (read Office).
So I'm normally just working in my browser and I (want to) start Word in the background, I click on the icon in the start menu and go back to whatever I was working on.

But no, Word has to pop up and stay in focus all the time and freeze for a couple of minutes (while not using any CPU or HDD). Usually stealing focus for a portion of the time from any other app.

The all time classic is "Click OK to restart you computer"

It's so important that you reboot now that you get no other options

However you can just move it out of the way and carry on so it obviously is not that important after all?

Why do they give you no other button if there truly is no other option ,or have a reboot later option if that is applicable

This is simply bad design, Is it important or not? If it's not obvious then it is badly designed

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

"At some level, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
-- Jeff Atwood

So..in language we can all understand:

incompetence ~= malice
incompetence == malice for really large values of 'incompetence'

I'll never forget that time Skype stole the focus from me. I had just initiated a remote desktop and was just about to type my password in, when a skype chat message popped up and I typed my password in to a co-worker.

My password was orange, and now he knows it.

@jeff

Linux suffers from this as well. The focus-stealing-prevention settings in Gnome do not work. Perhaps KDE is better, from the sounds of some others here.

> Switch to Mac OS X :-)

it does that too.. iTunes comes to the front often on things like detecting an iPod

The problem with Windows is that it's OK to steal focus some time, but something should be done for the keyboard accelerators for the buttons should be.

Windows Update it not too bad.
*** the cases that drove me to Firefox : ***
1) Download a file with IE 6
2) after it's downloaded to the cache, it copied it to the 'right location;
3) Focus-stealing progress bar shows up WITH THE CANCEL BUTTON GETTING THE FOCUS
4) Result: copying is cancelled, you have to find back where you were and download the file again

All the damn progress bars on Windows have keyboard focus on the Cancel button!!

> In Vista this is a little bit better. But not much. It's
> still the same principle. You can now tell it to remind you up
> to 4 hours later. But still not "Never!". I really don't see why..

Windows Update has to force people to reboot, otherwise they never do. They keep putting it up to later and never get the critical security installed.

Outlook is the absolute worst offender (after the Automatic Updates).

I'd love to hammer the thumbs of the guy responsible for that one.

oops, the IE download example is already in the article, my apology

a focus stealing scenario :
one evening,i was really tired but due to my zeal to learn c# i started reading an e-book.Then i got to the c# OOP part which i was eager to read.....out of nowhere this pop-up pops up :AVG Anti virus -updating (WTF!!!!).It drifted my focus from what i was reading such that after minimizing it i couldn't make sense out of the e-book i was reading .I just shut down the pc and went to sleep .freaking focus thieves.

one time i had a massive query i had constructed for use the next day. that evening windoze did an update and rebooted so the query was gone forever. so much for automatic updates.

i pretty much hate all anti-virus programs. they're more of a hindrance than help.

About IE:

I always check the checkbox on the download dialog, so that it just quietly completes. But I still get the annoying "copying files" dialog... I've already downloaded the file to the SAME partition, why does it have to COPY the file to the destination, when it could have moved it in less than a fraction of a second...

is this ForegroundLockTimeout you speak of the reason that miranda doesn't pop up message windows for me? i've always been annoyed that new instant messages don't pop up on top, even when i have expressly told them to do so.

@ fly.floh :

Even Firefox does it when a download is over.
It is annoying when you try to load many files.

The one that annoys me most is Firefox's Automatic Updates, which seem to be once a week. You know the dialog, the one that makes you install the update "Now" or "When you restart". No option for "Never", mind you. Call me a control freak, but that's not cool.

Ironically, as I typed this, the Outlook Meeting reminder stole my focus twice.

Some caveats.

> If I have an app running full-screen, it's because I want to give it my full attention. I'm really surprised Windows allows this.

It's quite rare, but I *have* been kicked out of full-screen games when a poorly written app forcefully pushes itself to the top. I'm pretty sure this isn't an easy thing to do-- that takes a special level of incompetent programming.

> I have to assume I am not the only person who has participated in the race where you are trying to type something in the IE address bar while it is loading a web page. If you are quick enough to get it all typed in before the new page starts loading, if not you will have to repeatedly click back on the address bar to take the focus off the loading page.

To be fair, we can't blame this entirely on IE. If there is JavaScript setting the focus to an element on the page (eg, Google search box) then the focus will be shifted as you describe. There is an argument from some usability folks that web pages should never explicitly set focus because the user doesn't expect this.

> It's quite rare, but I *have* been kicked out of full-screen games
> when a poorly written app forcefully pushes itself to the top. I'm
> pretty sure this isn't an easy thing to do-- that takes a special
> level of incompetent programming.

And the windows "you really do wan to reboot now you fool" dialog is one of the ones that will do it.

I concur

An awful one is when you get a login box popped forward, with the password field highlighted -- with a saved password. If you don't know the password, it's a terrible feeling when you type 'lol [enter]' into that box and wiped out the saved one.

I used to have this problem. Recently switched to a Mac and don't have it any more. I still use Windows Messenger as it seems to be the de facto IM client in SA, and even when I disconnect my NIC to cross over to a machine I'm building, all that happens is a notification behind my terminal window and an angry Messenger icon jumping up and down in the dock. I can live with that. Focus stealing is the devil.

I have seen this happen many, many times. The most memorable example was at a university symposium where a visiting professor was showing a Powerpoint presentation and a huge antivirus software update slid up the projection screen like a piece of radioactive toast. A hundred PhDs and academics sat there staring at it. The visiting professor was using a wireless clicker and did not have keyboard access. She tried to use the cursor keys on the clicker to get rid of it but, of course, the updater interpreted that to mean "go ahead and download GB of updates and restart the machine".

The entire symposium was blocked for several minutes until a tech turned off the screen and the professor continued the lecture without the presentation.

This is one of my pet peeves with Windows. It's so much less of a problem on OS X that when I first switched I thought the issue was gone. There is no way all the app devs are going to fix this. It must to be fixed at the OS level.

One of those little things that drives people nuts and affects user experience. The worst is typing and getting a pop up that sends your characters to a box. Why can't there be a user lockout for certain activities?

This kind of thing will never be fixed in the current Windows code base. It's a Version 2 item for when MS wants to copy Apple's OS switch and license or rewrite their whole UI.

Amen brother. This makes my top 5 list of Windows annoyances.

There's another one I would consider adding, though I'm not sure how common it is. When I click on certain applications on the taskbar that don't have focus, and those applications are not minimized, they get focus *and* minimize. Then I have to click the taskbar icon again to see the app I was trying to see. Argh! (maybe it's poor programming on the developer's part, I don't know... but maybe the OS shouldn't let this situation arise?)

Hallelujah! Preach it brother Jeff. I've been screaming about this for years. It happens more often in Windows than in Gnome/KDE, but it is the single greatest annoyance using GUI operating systems.

I've almost decided to go exclusively command line just because of this issue. I'm going to print out your blog post and put it up in my office.

>It's quite rare, but I *have* been kicked out of full-screen games when a poorly written app forcefully pushes itself to the top. I'm pretty sure this isn't an easy thing to do-- that takes a special level of incompetent programming.

The AIM messenger is very good at that particular trick. Even games that I can't even Alt-Tab out from, it can take them all down when someone pops up a new message window.

firefox is another culprit of changing focus by default to components you do not intend to use.i had google as my home for firefox,when i start up firefox (while the home page is still loading)and start typing an address in the address bar ,the focus shifts from the address bar automatically to the loaded google search engine leaving the address incomplete and continuing it in the search engine if i don not notice and change the focus to the address bar.that is so annoying!

BTW my home page is set to blank .that solve that annoying problem.

*solves

Here's the interesting part. It's not that it's just bad behavior, it's bad behavior that must also annoy a lot of people at Microsoft. I could probably come up with a list of at least ten windows quirks that must utterly annoy Microsofties - and yet they persist in the software for years.

This is really baffling to me. If it bugs you, then why wouldn't you fix it? Your customers probably hate it as well. You're knowingly making sub standard software if you don't.

Some Linux desktop managers (Gnome and KDE, IIRC) have this annoying property:

1. Go to workspace 2.
2. Launch a slow, bloaty program that takes a long time to come up
3. Go back to workspace 1.
4. Do some other work.
5. Slow, bloaty program elbows its way into workspace 1 instead of 2.

The inferior Comcast version of TiVo, once a program has completed recording, will throw up the equivalent of a system modal dialog the size of a mattress informing you that recording is complete (and blocking whatever you're trying to watch). But that's one defect among many, many for this hateful piece of software.

Groove is also annoying; unless you select "suppress alerts", the task tray icon interprets any mouse move within 200 pixels (ok, exaggerated) as a request to list every workspace that has updated files.

That leads to another problem where programs have no settings other than "don't tell me about anything, even fatal errors", and "level 7 OMG STFU all possible debug messages". I'm looking at you, InstallShield. And Ant, to a lesser degree.

I call bullshit on your anecdotal story: why wasn't the local copy of the source code on the developer's machine still good? And if it was half checked in, then those files just won't be updated on the next checkin.

Oh, and Peggle, which takes an inordinately long time to load for a 2-D non-scrolling game, *stops loading* if you alt-tab away from it. Loading will only complete if it's in the foreground.

I second the issue with Gmail stealing focus multiple times while it's loading. This is extremely annoying and goes to show this isn't just about desktop apps, Web 2.0 is just as guilty.

I haz a focuss in adium chat window!

[Adium pops-up dialog saying something like 3 new hotmails]

No!!!!!! they be stealin mai focuss.

[apologies to the lolrus that was traumatised after his buckit was stoled http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/2001982351398543517_rs.jpg ]

MacOS X tends to pop to front much the way windows does. No change there.

I seem to remember that MacOS classic didn't do this. If a backgrounded app wanted attention it would flash it's icon in the application menu. For example, it would do this if it popped up a dialog box.

The only time an app would pop to front was when it launched. I don't even think that putting up a new window would pop the app to front.

Yet another reason why MacOS X is worse than MacOS classic. :-)

I say boycott apps that steal focus! (Though I haven't managed to put all my money where my mouth is yet.)

Internet Explorer
RSS Bandit
Google Earth

>I say boycott apps that steal focus!
>Internet Explorer

some people can't live without IE namely the Microsoft die-hards.

I have extended "OK-itis" with that Automatic Update dialogue.

When it comes up, I reflexively type Alt+Space C Return net stop wuauserv Return exit Return to open a command prompt with Launchy and nuke the reminder from orbit.

If you can't imagine a message so important that it should take the foreground, you're not trying hard enough.

You can disable focus stealing with TweakUI. I used this to "fix" two applications I use at work that were constantly fighting to steal focus.

Someone already wrote a post about this...

http://raybdbomb.com/p/do-you-want-to-restart-are-you-sure-you-dont-want-to-are-you-sure-you-dont-want-to.html

I agree, it is very annoying!

Other things I hate include popups telling me I have "little or no connectivity", "that my desktop has unused icons", "that a hacker is attempting to ...", "that there is a new version of java", etc. Why does every browser need to inform the user that they are "sending information over the internet" every time it detects a virgin home directory?

For reference, emacs has a nice ui. Everything is a fully search/copy/paste-able buffer. The minibuffer is modal but it only gets activated at the user's command. One exception is the slime debugger popup but that means things are hosed anyway. Another not-so-nicety is that activity in one window such as gdb or the minibuffer can cause a buffer in another window to be temporarily hidden - bad if you needed it for reference. All interfaces have their issues but the emacs ones are more like design tradeoffs. OTOH, popups stealing focus is truly stupid.

"Windows needs to restart to finish installing updates"

.......HULK SMASH!!!

I'm like Jeff, I'll have 20 or 30 tabs open in Firefox, and windows will decide to let me know I'm going to have to read later, because some stupid update forces me to restart or face the focus-stealing dialog over and over and over and over and over.

And why do applications decide to steal focus MORE THAN ONCE while doing something.

We need to send this stuff to Microsoft. I only use Windows because everyone else is.

The root cause is really the basic assumption behind windows: That the user is always there, and he/she will always service the needs of the operating system rather the other way around.

You can see this even from when trying to install it: Windows has the neediest installer for any operating system today.

Give me twm any day.

I hate them both.... The only saving grace is that you can disable both features to prevent the reboot prompts! Every computer I use has Automatic Updates disabled (I'll install when I'm ready) and I make a ton of little setting changes to IE before I consider it usable (Disble Download Notifications, Do not search from the Address Bar, Diable Friendly Error Messages, etc...).

Um... no only does the focus not take over in OS X, but even in tabs in browsers in OS X. I can have a login box or alert in one tab and it will not override what I'm doing in the current tab. Ridiculous.

Let us all say AMEN! Short of a catastrophic system failure, there is no reason for any application or system notification to steal the focus from the user. EVER. And Microsoft is often the worst offender.

More applications should be like Firefox... when you go to download a plugin it makes you wait 3 seconds before you click ok, and the download boxes have to be moused to (or wait 3 seconds) before you can accept the download.

The stolen focus is annoying...

But what about those stupid messages saying "System will be restarted in 5 min"? What about if you got up from your desk and left your computer working on any heavy task? When you are back... system restarted and work lost.

Work lost = time lost = improductivity = expensive O.S.

This is my ABSOLUTE biggest pet peeve with graphical OSs. In fact, it's the main reason I went all Mac for my work about 4 years ago. It still happens in OS X but it's very rare and it tends to be appropriate - unlike Linux at work

To see this sort of end user notification and feed back down right, see Growl. It's absolute genius and deserves to be in the core of OS X and mimicked by everyone else:
http://growl.info/

paul

Yeah, I was about to second the mention of Growl on OS X in regards to the fellow mentioning Adium (my IM client of choice http://www.adiumx.com ) popping stuff up...

Commenting anonymously, but I have firsthand experience of how decisions like the reboot dialog get made at Microsoft.

Many people view security with an all-or-nothing mindset, which is ridiculous. Either the computer is "secure" or it "isn't", and this argument is used to force draconian measures on the user because "otherwise they aren't secure" (see UAC dialogs in Vista).

When an security update is released, the "nightmare scenario" is that someone's computer is on, downloads and installs the update, but *never reboots* for it to take effect. To avoid that horrible, horrible nightmare the solution is to force a reboot whenever possible, such as 5 minutes of inactivity.

Thinking about it, what computers are up for days at a time? Servers. Which are configured by admins who want to decide when to reboot. Most users reboot nightly, and to be honest, given the speed of security update deployment, one extra day isn't that huge a deal. If they haven't been bitten yet they probably won't be. The tradeoff is not worth it, but "users must be secure at any cost".

moral of the story: don't use windows

I can think of one case where focus stealing is acceptable, even desirable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire

Anyone tried to use the "stay on top" attribute to the window you do not want focus to be stolen from ? There used to be a "Nail It" program for Win98/2k to set this attribute for any window at will; but I am now away from it all and blissfully using OS X (for the past 3 years).

There's a really simple solution to this annoyance:

1. Steal the focus with your dialog box.
2. Don't focus any of the buttons (and make sure enter doesn't do anything).
3. Wait 2 seconds.
4. Focus one of the buttons.

Then there's no way anyone will accidentally press spacebar or enter and make a mess of things.

Steve

I remembered my old snake program written in VB6. Every time the snake bumped the edge of the window or itself, a critical error dialog box saying "THE SNAKE IS DEAD!" would appear.

There is related problem in browsers:
Applications should not change the contents of a textbox while a user is typing in it, caret should not be moved away from the textbox either.

Example 1:
You point your browser at Gmail, and as soon as the username and password fields appear, you begin filling them in, but while you are in the middle of that, auto-fill-passwords kicks in and screws up your shit... you may find yourself typing out your password in a non-censored textbox.

Example 2:
Typing into the main address bar of a browser while it is loading a page...

Or when you are typing a document, and that means hitting the space bar every second or so, and up pops a dialog that disappears.

And the update dialog that reboots by default is particularly gross.

David Avraamides wrote:

"I call bullshit on your anecdotal story: why wasn't the local copy of the source code on the developer's machine still good? And if it was half checked in, then those files just won't be updated on the next checkin."

You're half-right. The story was bullshit, but it wasn't anecdotal, it was rhetorical. Furthermore it was recursively rhetorical, and it included an auxiliary jab about checkins, and it borrowed a line from an old science fiction story where a magician was stuck halfway in and halfway out of a Klein bottle.

So it was bullshit. There must be some other reason why a fix exceeds Microsoft's programming capabilities.

instead of prompt box that appears on the screen why not make it like google pop up. It only goes on the lower right screen and it doesnt grab someones focus though it gets attention which is obviously its purpose.

try this programmer. try this.

So switch to a decent window manager already: http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/. Never lose focus. Perform windowing operations without ever touching the rat.

Re: Slow, bloated apps starting in different workspaces.

Mac does this too. It's freaking annoying. FF is the worst. One of the reasons I think I don't experience any problems with focus stealing in Mac is my usage pattern. I run six workspaces, with my Mail, FireFox, a terminal screen, Wireshark and iTunes open, with the sixth reserved for short use apps. I spend almost all of my time CTRL / between my browser and terminal.

Don't use IE. Don't use Windows, duh.

Oh boy, I never realized that this was such a big problem for so many!

BitDefender is shocking for this.

You can be watching a film full screen with BitDefender running in the background when suddenly it decides it needs to bring its auto-update progress box to the front and 'Restore' media player to running in a window.

For each update, this happens twice !

Truly appalling software design.

Brilliant.

And I just thought it was me quietly going bananananas.

Attention-whore apps are *especially* frustrating if you're confined to a so-called low specification (win) machine: you can't even try to predict when the various processes will kick off and leap out of nowhere to kill/crash/delete/send whatever really shouldn't be killed, crashed, deleted and/or sent.

This happened only a few weeks ago to one of our people at bookkeeping... She was entering data in a form for a huge file, when the (WinXP) computer applied automatic updates, and gave her an option to either restart the computer now, or within a few minutes. No option to cancel.

Because the form wasn't complete, she couldn't save it. The program doesn't allow to save drafts. And the computer rebooted.

She lost several hours of data entry work in this incident.

You forgot to mention the ridiculous info bubbles like:

"Your document has been sent to the printer"
"Network connection has been established"
"Your computer is not protected"
"blablabla"
...

Do we need this information? I guess some programmers do think that there functions are awesome and want the world to know. They probably tell there mates "hey you know that incredibly annoying info bubble, it's mine"

One of the many frustrations that made me switch to mac/linux.

There's nothing like the panick you feel when you have to play the "reach the save button before the computer restarts" game every time you accidentally click the "restart now" button...

The worst culprit for this that I deal with on a daily basis is Sonic Scenarist. When you're outputting a project to DLT, if the tape needs changing it'll popup up a dialogue in front of whatever app you're using asking you to change the tape, but you'll also be unable to switch focus back to that app you were using until the tape is available, which can take up to 2 minutes. Stupid.

"Thinking about it, what computers are up for days at a time?"
My computer is rarely rebooted, I hibernate.

I second the idea that a Growl like system would save a lot of this. Then again it's possible to do something similar with balloon tooltips but they're underused too.

To everyone Bitching about the 5 minute forced restart. If I'm not mistaken, this setting only applies if you're receiving updates from an SMS Server, and the system policy is to force a reboot. If this is happening on your home computer then something is borked, as in all my years of using XP, I've never seen that.

Yes it can be worse.One word - Norton bloody antivirus (actually three). Besides being attention whore app and crappy antivirus, Norton is also confidentley "OK" with your choice of restarting the computer. Its like living in Soviet Russia - where computers reboots you.
The problem is that in the midle of a work, OK button seems just confirmation button for a message that INFORMS you that the updates are complete (like, for example AVG has) However, after you press enter (just to get rid of the bastard) your next thoughts are 'Shit...Did i save that last bit?". Chasing the app and pressing ctrl+s combo after that can be fun though. Not good if you were wacthing that XXX torrent file you just downloaded.

And don't look me like that for using Norton - it's a workstation at work.

This used to be a decent blog. Now its turned into another bash Microsoft for page hits blog. Enjoy your new ad revenue from the Reddit/Digg crowd.

Stealing focus is vital in online poker where you can be surfing etc but when its your turn to move the software pops to the front of the screen.

If not you won't know when its your turn !

Apart from that apps should never steal focus.

The worst I've experienced for doing this was notification application for a music event. It stole the focus just after my bluetooth mouse batteries died. It stopped me from accessing the application for installing bluetooth devices nor could I save any of my programs. In my rage I repeatedly press the power switch and thus broke the case.

Another hate of mine is unnecessary system tray icons. They are usually the same applications that decide they should be started when the machine is booted up thus making it 5 minutes before the machine is usable.

I've been upset about this for a while. The Windows Update nag box is the biggest offender, though. I can't believe that Microsoft allowed it to work that way.

IM clients are another problem. I'm not sure if it's the use of the flashing task in the task bar or not. But, those new windows (especially in older versions of IM clients) would often pull you out of a full-screen application.

I can see when you may want apps to steal focus. But, I think that they should be allowed to do so only after you are notified of the first attempt and given a choice: "Allow this application to steal focus?" "Always allow this application to steal focus." "Do not allow.." etc.

Stolen Focus:
I'm typing away blissfully, and from the corner of my eye I see a window come and go, stealing my last few keystrokes. Even worse is when I'm not sure which window popped up and what did I just tell it to do?

For the disabled PC user, every mouse click and keystroke can be a major effort or literal pain. So disabled users will often go to great lengths to automate repetitive tasks and minimize the steps required to perform each task. This includes the use of macros, voice recognition, mouse and keyboard utilities, and special hardware such as head-controlled mice and programmable button boards.

But in spite of these efforts, disabled PC users are often confounded by all-too-common problems found in today's Windows and Web applications.

Following are 20 problems with PC software that may be minor nits for many users but can be a huge problem for the disabled.

http://www.devtopics.com/pcs-and-the-disabled-20-molehills-that-become-mountains/

This is especially hilarious if you're the kind of person who enjoys videogames, like me. Especially if the games you like are memory-hungry ones that provoke minute-long bouts of memory swapping whenever you switch out of them from fullscreen mode. I can't tell you how many times my IM application of choice has screwed over a game of Team Fortress 2 by forcing it to minimize out of the blue in favor of a one-line message from a contact. At the best of times, it results in spending the better part of a round just trying to get back to a playable state; at the worst of times, it takes the entire operating system down with it.

Tip from Simon Peyton Jones' site:

http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/win32-cheat.html

"Microsoft Powertoys is a bunch of small but useful tools. Ones I've used or had recommended include:

* TweakUI: a control panel that lets you alter aspects of the Windows user interface. The ones I like are:
o File-name completion in the cmd shell.
o Stopping popup windows stealing focus, so that your input goes to the new window."

Herrmann: Sadly, it doesn't do a good job at it. Even after installing TweakUI and toggling that setting, Pidgin still steals focus all the time.

Focus-stealing is bad enough but ... Microsof'ts source code control CORRUPTS FILES when the OS requests a restart in the middle? And no one sees anything wrong with this?

An OS restart request is just that: a request. Any app worth its salt should check the "dirty" state, pop up a "save" confirmation (or if it is in the middle of a critical operation stall until that finishes), and wait for the user to hit "save" AND commit everything to disk before telling the OS it is done by shutting down.

I've seen this work on Windows, so I know it's not an OS X only thing. It's just bad programmers not properly reacting to OS messages.

As for those saying it doesn't happen on OS X: it does. Prime candidate is my workplace-required Norton Antivirus, which pops up its "live update" window whenever and wherever it pleases. I also notice that ChronoSync occasionally "borrows" focus (it doesn't pop to the front, and the keyboard doesn't trigger its "Abort" button, but it does interrupt the flow of writing for a word or two at a time, intermitently). It's just that most OS X developers use the less-invasive methods for getting a user's attention (bring up an alert sheet which bounces the dock icon) ...

Anyway, back to the original topic: does IE still not care that you have a long missive typed in a text field when asked to restart? I know Firefox and Safari have long-since discovered that, more often than not, the thing I've been typing is relevant to me and I don't want to just shut down the app without submitting it ...

Disagree. I agree about the potential for damage. I was getting source one day (which takes forever). While typing happily away, my plug-in popped up and I happened to hit the letter commanding it to overwrite my local code wiping out some work.
I want a way to prevent these kind of actions, but I don't mind the pop-up itself. I can't do the task bar flash thing because I have mine hidden (I need the real estate). I tried to configure my meeting reminders from outlook to pop-up but they've made that impossible in the current version. I can't see the task bar flash and I often miss the sound because I have headphones plugged in that I'm not wearing at the moment. So I'm late to meetings.

Switch to GNU/Linux. Most window managers do a perfect job at focus stealing prevention ;). I use KWin ATM. No app has ever stolen my focus.

Mike P: "one time i had a massive query i had constructed for use the next day. that evening windoze did an update and rebooted so the query was gone forever. so much for automatic updates."

Sorry, Mike, but if you took the time to write a "massive query" to use the next day, and then walked away for the night without saving it first, that isn't a Windows problem; that's an incompetent user problem.

You can't blame "windoze" for your own stupidity. Blame Windows for the things it does wrong (like the dialog we're discussing here). But don't blame it for what isn't it's fault.

Brian: "To everyone Bitching about the 5 minute forced restart. If I'm not mistaken, this setting only applies if you're receiving updates from an SMS Server, and the system policy is to force a reboot. If this is happening on your home computer then something is borked, as in all my years of using XP, I've never seen that."

If you're running XP and *not* seeing this, you have automatic updates turned off, or don't have an internet connection on your machine. I'm using a fresh install of Windows XP Media Edition (which is XP Pro with a handful of media enhancements added) with SP2; until I found out you could fix this issue using Group Policy Editor, it drove me nuts.

elijan sejic: "Not good if you were wacthing that XXX torrent file you just downloaded.

And don't look me like that for using Norton - it's a workstation at work."

So you were watching "that XXX torrent file you just downloaded" on "a workstation at work"? Is that a terribly good idea? And does your employer know about this?

MiddleMan: "This used to be a decent blog. Now its turned into another bash Microsoft for page hits blog. Enjoy your new ad revenue from the Reddit/Digg crowd."

I don't see it that way. There's nothing wrong for criticizing MS for things it does wrong; the problem is with the "Reddit/Digg" and /. crowd that insists on bashing MS for everything, even things it has no control over (see my response above to Mike P for an example). Your post is another example of a totally ludicrous post (as bad in a different way as Mike P's), as you seem to think that MS is absolutely perfect and should never have a negative thing said about them.

However, if you feel that negative about Jeff's posts here, I'm sure he'll be glad to refund the membership dues that you paid in full, and you can simply delete the bookmark you have to codinghorror.com.

And Jeff? If the refund is an issue for you (like say you spent that vast amount you collected from MiddleMan already on your mortgage or something), drop me a note and I'll chip in to help you out.

Mike Time: "Stealing focus is vital in online poker where you can be surfing etc but when its your turn to move the software pops to the front of the screen.

If not you won't know when its your turn !"

If you're playing online poker, you should play online poker and not do something else. That way you'll know when it's your turn, and won't need focus to be stolen.

Besides... Are you suggesting that Microsoft somehow create an API call that can *only* be used by online poker games to steal focus, but not be used by other applications? How exactly would that work? Would the poker game have to register with MS in order to get the information about the API? If so, what's to prevent them from using the API in another type of application as well?

Or do we have the poker game creator get the game's name embedded into Windows itself, so that the kernel can reject calls to the API unless the game is on the list? In that case, what happens if Vista contains the list now, and tomorrow you create a new poker game - how do you get added to the list so you can use the API? Do you wait until the next service pack for Vista? What if you've missed the deadline for that? Do you wait for the next release of Windows? Vista was only five years late.

You can't allow one type of program to do something that others can't. For instance, you can't let one video driver do something that all other video drivers can't do.

Peter C O Johansson: "I can't tell you how many times my IM application of choice has screwed over a game of Team Fortress 2 by forcing it to minimize out of the blue in favor of a one-line message from a contact. At the best of times, it results in spending the better part of a round just trying to get back to a playable state; at the worst of times, it takes the entire operating system down with it."

As I said before and now say again, that's not Windows' fault. It's yours, for leaving your IM application running while you play such a resource intensive game, thereby allowing it to interrupt.

It's fine to hammer on MS and/or Windows for things they do wrong, but you can't blame your own screwups on them.

Tom Dibble: "An OS restart request is just that: a request. Any app worth its salt should check the "dirty" state, pop up a "save" confirmation (or if it is in the middle of a critical operation stall until that finishes), and wait for the user to hit "save" AND commit everything to disk before telling the OS it is done by shutting down.

I've seen this work on Windows, so I know it's not an OS X only thing. It's just bad programmers not properly reacting to OS messages."

Well, you're mostly right. A well-behaved application will *request* a restart, and if any running process says "No", the restart request is denied.

However, the Windows API does allow that request to be phrased as a requirement; that's done using the same API function (InitiateShutdown) with the SHUTDOWN_FORCE_OTHERS, SHUTDOWN_FORCE_SELF and SHUTDOWN_POWEROFF (and possibly the SHUTDOWN_GRACE_OVERRIDE) flags. That means that an ill-behaved application can force you to restart, even if you don't want to do so. I suppose this was done so that the OS itself could force a restart, but MS couldn't restrict it to only being used by the OS, as with some of the parameters it is quite useful from a systems/network administrator standpoint.

This is one thing unix has gotten right for over 30 years. Sloppy focus all the way!

Wasn't this covered once before or was that another blog/forum?

Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop

Edit the key ForegroundLockTimeout

Give it a value of 00030d40

Reboot

This has always pissed me off... I dunno how many times i've IMed my friends chunks of code by accident. The IM client I've been using the last couple years, Adium, has a preference for its incoming-message-focus behavior which has been helped keep my blood pressure nice n low =)

No kidding, I was thinking about this the day before this blog post. I really really hate apps stealing focus, it's why I disable features I can that steal focus, like MSN's nudges, which piss me off most (why they ever added that is beyond me, I thought MSN Messenger was developed for admins to use to message each other or sumat? Not to have conversations, and then get into a hissy fit when the person doesn't reply back for a whole 5 seconds).
I don't get so annoyed when the program doesn't steal focus, but still pops up on screen, like new XFire messages, even though they're not perfect, from the fact you then have to switch to them, to close them anyhow.

"There we remain today, with the check in half-in and half-out, unusable, with no good copy of the code."

I'd say the issue isn't about focus-stealing dialogs (which are indeed a nuisance with wich I fortunately don't have to deal with on my Linux desktop) but the fact that they're using a pretty crappy code revision system that doesn't care about atomic commits. Serves them good. Bad decisions tend to come bite you when you least expect it.

[Editor's note: I wondered about that too, as TFS uses a two-phase commit system. The original commenter, Rhett Torek, noted that his post was a parody and not an actual event.]

Recently I heard someone recommend that you simply file a bug report for the application that stole your focus.

They were talking more about open source projects in active development, but there is no reason you can't do it for any application. Providing it is actually possible to submit a bug report...

Is not being able to submit a bug report a bug in itself?

KenW: I in no way implied that Microsoft is prefect. I have been reading this blog for quite a while and always felt it was fair in its criticisms.
The second paragraph in this post is pure FUD. I once kicked the power strip in the middle of a check in, after starting up my computer I checked it in again without error. Really thats what prompted my first post, now i think I may have been a bit harsh. One bad commit doesn't negate hundreds of good ones.
I apologize to Jeff.
I agree 100% with everything else KenW said, couldn't have put it better myself.

[KenW ] So you were watching "that XXX torrent file you just downloaded" on "a workstation at work"? Is that a terribly good idea? And does your employer know about this?"

hold your horses KenW - it was a joke, or more like it was a warning to the 'internet audience' (using the computer primarily for prOn) of the possible consequence.

I know though that sentence sounded like I am watching XXX videos at work, but blame that on my English as a second language. And elieve me, buddy I am so busy I don't have time to wank at home, yet alone at w

If you are using IE instead of FF, you deserve it!

Hey orange, this is for you:

Happened to my wife yesterday - she was trying to use the BART
website to print herself a one-day parking pass. She was using
an OSX 10.4 powerbook with FireFox and choose Save As PDF.
Unfortunately something went wrong with Firefox at that moment
and another modal dialog appeared.

This dialog unfortunately obscured the first one but for some reason
did not have the focus. She freaked out because now she couldn't
safely quit the application and she was afraid that she wouldn't
be able to get back to the site without having to pay again.

Luckily the number for her parking pass was visible on the screen
so she recorded that and called the help line.

I don't think this is a browser issue, and I think the only solution
is to insist that all modal dialogs implement the ESC key as Cancel.
The vi editor got this right 30 years ago: you should always be
allowed to press ESC to get out of whatever mode you're in.

Imagine what ?
Yesterday I got a requirement to work on which talks about EXACTLY this. In fact, the requirement talks about implementing a new feature in existing application, that will pop-up a dialogue when user tries to query some data on the form. And what is the purpose of the new screen ? Bingo....audit user access.....and the icing on the cake is the new screen needs to be displayed randomly.....
Sometimes, I really feel people think that computer is a magician...
:)

KenW: If you're running XP and *not* seeing this, you have automatic updates turned off, or don't have an internet connection on your machine. I'm using a fresh install of Windows XP Media Edition (which is XP Pro with a handful of media enhancements added) with SP2; until I found out you could fix this issue using Group Policy Editor, it drove me nuts.

Are we talking about the same thing here? I was referring to the Forced reboot in 5 minutes. While I admit I don't have my home PC set to Automatically install updates currently, I can't think of the countdown for a forced reboot ever appearing. I only ever see that on my Work PC hooked up to the SMS server.

At home, my Automatic updates are set to Download, and notify, and I DO get the Updates have been installed, you need to reboot nag message.

So ... buy a Leopard
This and many more problems fixed ...

I don't suppose anyone noticed the fix I posted to the stealing focus problem in windows?

Scot, the "fix" only works if the programmers let it work. It's enabled by default in Vista, and we still have problems with evil programmers deciding to steal the focus.

Comandment #8: "Thou shall not steal"

How's this for an example of why stealing focus is bad:

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/671/lolfirefoxrj1.jpg

That's the reason why I don't let my programmers talk to each other. For example, if there're two of them, for one it's always faster (1 minute) to ask something that he's forgotten (class name, how to use a specific command in editor, etc), then to read the manual (3 minutes). But for the other programmer it's an interruption (15 minutes!!!). After he switches to another task, he has to switch back, remember what he was doing, the structure, etc. So I don't let them sit together - and it really affects their productivity.

While not quite the same, I've accidentally deleted accounts using Novell's Console One because of the quirkiness of how it manages focuses. Just as annoying I suppose.

I HATE that stupid popup so much. If I am in-game and it comes up it minimizes my window, I have a lame graphics card so I can't tab back into my game! RUINING MY GAME! >=(

Stealing the focus is perfectly acceptable,
so long as it is due to a user generated action.

Adobe Reader's update or confirm dialog sometimes doesnt pop up- stealing focus- but pops under, which seems to make the program freeze.

never acceptable? dude just disable automatic updates, and btw. dont use adobe reader either.

If the Devil contributed anything to software, or has any influence in Redmond, I'm sure this is his greatest (most malevolen