Re: Stealing focus!

Evan,

... but the password

window stays hidden BEHIND the connection panel so you can't see it. Sheer
Genius.

Don't be so fast to blame them -- Windows seems to not be that accurate at
tracking what windows are actually on top of each other. Some of the
problems I see semi-regularly:

Windows does not always bring modals to the foreground. I've seen way too
many cases where operations seem to take way too long, and if I start
minimizing open windows eventually find there is a modal sitting waiting for
a confirmation, but the modal was buried behind other applications. In my
experience, this happens more with Windows Explorer than other programs, but
I've seen it with others too. For example, when I'm deleting file or moving
things, and the delete or replace modal does not come to the foreground --
and yes, this is while Explorer itself was the foreground app. I've seen
the same thing with installers and other applications, with no discernable
pattern as to when it happens.

Spawning applications programatically and telling it to get the focus (eg
VB's Shell( ...., vbNormalFocus ) function) will sometimes launch the
application behind other open windows and all you see is a new task bar icon
show up. Generally it works; sometimes it does not even when there is no
other user activity going on and the VB program calling Shell() was (and
remains) the foreground application with the focus.

Drag and drop sometimes drops files on an application *behind* the topmost
window where you appear to be dropping it. For example, I use an editor
which supports drag and drop to open files. I also use a FTP client which
does the same. There have been numerous cases where my editor has been in
the background, the FTP client on top of it, and I've drug files to the FTP
client. I see the mouse change to the expected plus sign pointer when over
the right FTP child windows. But when I release the mouse to drop the file,
the FTP client does nothing. Later when I switch to the editor, I find the
file open in the editor -- it got the drop message instead of the visible
application on top of it.

In all these cases, I don't think the application itself is doing anything
differently -- Windows is just not bringing the right window to the
foreground or in the last case above, sending the drop message to the right
window.

Doug