Focus
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One thing I hate about windows is how applications jump up into focus. This is especially true of IE. I can't tell you how often I've typed my internet banking password into a CP window. I often am doing 5 things at once. I KNOW what they are. I don't need to be interrupted in what I am doing because some app decided it knows better than I do what I want to do next.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
What's worse than that is when the window that is brought to the front is indeed important (e.g., error message, warning), but you've quickly dismissed it by typing.
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." - Ellen Goodman
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
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One thing I hate about windows is how applications jump up into focus. This is especially true of IE. I can't tell you how often I've typed my internet banking password into a CP window. I often am doing 5 things at once. I KNOW what they are. I don't need to be interrupted in what I am doing because some app decided it knows better than I do what I want to do next.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
I have a vague memory that they tried to get rid of this in XP. I suspect a lot of people complained. I want the OS to discern my unstated intentions are when deciding to switch focus. It should know whether doing so will irritate me or make me happy.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I have a vague memory that they tried to get rid of this in XP. I suspect a lot of people complained. I want the OS to discern my unstated intentions are when deciding to switch focus. It should know whether doing so will irritate me or make me happy.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
I have a vague memory that they tried to get rid of this in XP.
Yup - something to the effect that
SetForegroundWindow()and kin stop working when the foreground window is owned by a different process (with some sort of exception for programs that are being launched and therefore should be able to take focus from the program that launched them). When it works, it's great - you see a little flashing taskbar button indicating the program wants your attention, but if you're busy elsewhere you just ignore it and everything keeps working. Except, of course, in apps like IE where multiple top-level windows share the same process. Apparently, making the world safe for pop-up advertisers was more important than reducing user annoyance.Joe Woodbury wrote:
I suspect a lot of people complained.
Yup. And so we get a heapin' helpin' of hacks to get around it. Using
AttachThreadInput()to associate your program with whoever owns the active window is a common one. The never-ending battle between users and the evil software developers who want to hurt them know better than them. -
One thing I hate about windows is how applications jump up into focus. This is especially true of IE. I can't tell you how often I've typed my internet banking password into a CP window. I often am doing 5 things at once. I KNOW what they are. I don't need to be interrupted in what I am doing because some app decided it knows better than I do what I want to do next.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
I couldn't agree more - I hate this about windows! I've once *SENT* a password to someone in a chat window because I typed the password followed by ENTER but as I did so a chat window came to the forefront. Windows should be smarter than that... but somehow all the "smartness" went into making translucent form edges and 3D-flipping :doh: