Focus stealing

In computing, focus stealing is when a program not in focus (e.g minimised or operating in background) places a window in the foreground and redirects all keyboard input to that window. This is considered a major annoyance by most users because the program may steal the focus while their attention is not on the computer screen, such as when typing while reading copy to the side. This will cause everything typed after the window appeared to be lost. On slow computers users are sometimes not even alerted to this behaviour in time, because the associated window is only actually displayed several seconds after the actual focus change happened.

Focus stealing can also be damaging as the user may, while typing when their attention is away from the screen, inadvertently agree to a program doing something that causes damage. An example is when Windows pops-up the Disk Cleanup wizard and the user agrees to deleting files without realizing that the wizard was waiting for input. Focus stealing can also be treated as a security risk. For example, when a password is being typed and the typed password appears instead in a new window in an unmasked input field.

In modern versions of Windows, focus stealing is prevented for most programs by default, but cannot be entirely avoided because not all programs respect the system-wide setting. [ [http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_prevent_applications_fr.htm John Barnett's Windows XP Help and Support ] ]

See also

* Focus
* Window

References

External links

* [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP] The TweakUI utility has a setting to prevent programs from stealing the focus.