It’s driving me bananas. I’m running Windows XP Home. I’ve already set the option in TweakUI, and also changed the “foregroundlocktimeout” value to 10000000, and applications STILL steal focus–the offenders most often are Eudora (which I leave running to check email regularly) and Semagic (which I usually minimize after posting to LJ and just forget about until it steals focus while I’m playing a game to tell me a friend has a birthday coming up).
Google is failing me; all I’m coming up with are the two solutions I’ve already tried. Is there anything else I can do?
If it’s a web application running from IE or something, you can’t prevent it that I am aware of. Because it’s considered a different instance of the same application, it’s allowed to steal focus from itself or anything based on it.
Stealing focus is an ugly behavior of Windows apps that gets criticized a lot in forums about programming. None of the items I found talked about how to prevent it, unless you’re the person writing the application that does it.
In human society, interrupting and demanding immediate attention is rude & obnoxious behavior, but most people outgrow this about age 5 or 6.
Bill Gates, however, decided to build this in as the default behavior in Windows. So it’s very hard to change that. If the programmer of each application went to extra effort, they can make it possible to change this. Good programmers do; many others don’t.
Eudora steals focus in two ways - when it opens a new mail folder window (when a new message is filtered into a folder, that folder window will open), or when it encounters an error and the error message window opens.
There is no way to stop it, beyond having those offending windows open at all times.
Stealing focus? Is this the official name for “I want to open Internet Explorer and check my email because my boss is on the interstate RIGHT NOW and needs to know what exit to take because he thought he was too manly to need directions to the airport but is now late getting to the airport for his plane to Turkey where an angel investor is going to give him five million dollars which will save all our butts for the next year but only if he’s there in person, but Windows is too busy rearranging its tailfeathers to heed my command”? Because that has been bugging me more than usual in the last few weeks.
I won’t be able to help you with a universal fix (TweakUI tends to be the best suggestion in this case; unfortunately, as you said, it just ain’t working for you), but if you have a recent version of Eudora (specifically, version 7), have you tried minimizing it to the system tray? When it’s in that mode, it won’t steal focus; instead, you’ll just be relying on the Eudora tray icon to alert you when you receive new mail. It’s what I always use; plus, it frees up space on the taskbar.
To activate it, click: Tools | Options | Display | Minimize Eudora to the system tray.
I like opening two or three programs at once, then watch as they fight with each other for focus. It’s kinda like a little game, all the thrills of dog racing without the smelly track (and you don’t win any money). Of course, you can’t actually do anything useful with the computer while this is happening, but it can at least provide some entertainment while you are stuck there accomplishing nothing.
Also in Eudora 7 you can go to TOOLS - OPTIONS - GETTING ATTENTION and un-check everything there. And then go to BACKGROUND TASKS and un-check “Bring error window to front” and “Bring task status window to front.”
I have Eudora 7 running 24 hours a day on my work machine, and I get hundreds of emails and a handful of errors all day long. It never, ever steals focus.
The weird thing about Eudora has been that it doesn’t steal focus all the time, just every once in a while, and I never paid enough attention to notice if there was some specific combination of programs that made it do that. 90% of the time, Eudora would be a nice little program and just play its sound when new mail came in, but that 10 when it was rude and pushy was really irritating. This tray option will be just the ticket, I think.
Well, in my experience, if you simply minimize Eudora, it doesn’t steal focus regardless of errors, incoming mail, filtering, etc… But if you don’t minimize it; if you leave the Eudora window open and simply move on to another program, you’re allowing Eudora to steal focus once something new happens. For me, minimizing it (regardless of whether it’s minimized to the system tray) takes care of the focus problem.
ZipperJJ’s suggestion would also work as a solution, but I like my mailboxes opening after being filtered, so I leave that option checked in the “Getting Attention” section of the Options, and I just remember to minimize Eudora when I don’t want it to steal focus.
You can even adjust that, so that it only plays sound for non-SPAM email. Anything that your Eudora SPAM filters catch will be routed to your SPAM mailbox, but silently!
I find that silence a blessed relief. I really don’t need to know everytime some SPAM arrives.