Please Don't Steal My Focus

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

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?

Don’t use IE. Don’t use Windows, duh.

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.

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.

[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

"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.