Focus stealing

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In computing, Focus stealing is when a program not in focus (e.g minimised or the 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. It 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.

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. [1]

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[edit] References

  1. ^ John Barnett's Windows XP Help and Support

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