When I dial up with my 56K and log on to AOHell, it keeps grabbing the focus* from whatever other application I’m using. Let’s say I’m playing Solitaire while waiting for it to connect (as I usually do). When the AOHell connection is completed, it grabs the focus from the Solitaire window. It also makes everything run suddenly very slow for a few seconds, as though grabbing most of the memory. This repeats about three times within the first minute after the AOHell connection is made. WTF is going on here? Is there any remedy?
[sub]*Focus: Computer talk for the window or part of a window that is currently activated. Where your cursor happens to be blinking, or the button that has the dotted outline.[/sub]
Also: When I open a window, I’m used to it automatically having focus. So I can straightaway use the keyboard’s Page Down or Down Arrow keys to scroll down. But not on AOHell. There, a new window doesn’t get focus until you click in it. How did they not think of this?
Speaking of stealing focus, some Web sites do this too. Hotmail especially. It takes forever to load a new page. So you go to another application while waiting. Then suddenly WHAM you’re back in Hotmail, like it or not. It snaps you back without warning whenever it decides to. Is there any way to set preferences to give you more control over your browser?
I hear ya— I hate having to deliberately click on the browser window each time a new page is loaded, but AOHell isn’t the only bastard that steals the focus. I think that is a general browser event, as my IE does it too (5, 5.5, and 6). I never cease to be annoyed by it.I hope to god there is some way to change that, but I highly doubt it.
In fact, I actually think all programs steal the focus when they load something, you just normally don’t notice. for example, when you open an MS word document, you do so by a file chooser or the pull-down menu’s memory links. In both cases clicking on the file will close that window, which would then bring the next highest window to the front. But, secretly, I think it grabs the focus anyway.
I hate that. I’ll get to the damn window when I’m good and ready.
Actually, the real question is: what version of AOL are you using?
I’m still using AOL 4, and it does not steal the focus from other windows on connection. I do, however, like you, have to click within an AOL window in order to use the page-up/page-down keys (I think that’s an aspect of the way that AOL decided to implement their multiple-document interface, though - just a feeling that when a new browser window is created, the keyboard focus remains with the main window, which has no scroll bar).
One bizarre thing I’ve noticed of late, however, is that whenever http://www.dictionary.com decides to pop-up an advertisement, all of the other applications I’m running are brought to the top, and I’ve got to re-click AOL to get it to the front again. For example, I’ll go to the main page, enter a word and hit enter, and after the defintions page comes up, I’ll suddenly find solitaire, Windows Explorer, and the instance of Notepad I was using to take notes on some thread or another back up in my face, with AOL in the back. Clicking on the AOL window brings it back on top, and the ad is a teensy-weensy window with junk in it from whatever happened to overlay that area.
This reminds me of the only thing I don’t like about Google. Whenever the page loads it’s brought up to the top. Thankfully turning off javascript disables this. Too bad there’s nothing that can be done with other programs.