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Focus stealing apps

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s00pcan

Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Location
Columbiaville MI
I can't stand it when some program steals focus from my games or a movie. So what if my disc is done burning / some idiot is sending me a message / someone is calling me on skype, I DON'T need to die in cs:s because of it or be forced to get up and fullscreen my media player again. I'm running windows XP MCE.

So, does anyone out there know a fix for this? Tweakui and the registry fix for this does absolutely nothing. Also, don't say "turn off trillian/skype/cd burning/everything while playing a game or watching a movie", I didn't get a dual core processor to run one program at a time.
 
Focus stealing annoys the living hell out of me. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to be taken out back and shot.

Tweakui would be great if the option didn't randomly turn itself off all the time. I had the problem in 2k and also have it in XP. It's good for awhile, then suddenly I notice something stealing focus and I go and check tweakui. What do I see? Naturally, the box is unchecked and I have to recheck it.

I wish there was something that would permanently prevent focus stealing.
 
I can help with the instnt messaging part. get xfire. instead of minimizing the game, a little window appears in the lower right corner. Its big for an IM program though (~110 megs) other people have to use it and when someone IMs you it plays this really annoying sound that scares the **** out of you if you arent ready for it. ofcourse, then theres google talk which doesnt minimize the game. it doesnt do anything, besides annoy your friends when you minimize the game and find out theyve been trying to get your attention for the past 2 1/2 hours.
 
I have xfire, but I don't use it all the time. Still, that doesn't stop people from messaging me on aim who don't want to play a game with me. Trillian only seems to screw it up when two or more contacts IM me, creating a container window. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop it from doing that. I have the "group contact groups" setting off and "minimize new windows to taskbar" on.

By the way, thanks for the mature posts. I got some stupid replies on other forums by people who obviously don't suffer from the same problem.
 
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Trillian doesn't do that for me when I'm playing WoW. A lot of times I'll come back to 3-4 missed messages and I don't even know it.
 
The containers cause the focus stealing problem on trillian, it seems. And the settings are actually keeping the containers off now. I had my friend test it a second ago and skype was the culprit this time. Still, the fix on the skype forums doesn't work, so I don't know what to do for that. I wish there was a windows-wide solution to this, but tweakui isn't it.
 
I dont use trillian, or skype anymore. I stick with Yahoo and MSN. MSN does nothing when running full screen. Yahoo is nicer cuz it beeps but also doesnot steal focus.

Plus yahoo has VoiP for 3 dollars a month for telephone number and 2 cents a minute calling. (pc to phone only) as always pc to pc or phone to PC are free :). Even better, If you are using a soundcard.. .keep it default and use onboard sound for a Mic-Headset. (you can still set yahoo to ring on the speakers)
 
There are forums that just seem like they want to flame anything that is not within their boundaries. That is the primary reason why I like this forum so much. Here, people will try to help as much as they can, and some even get curious and try to find an answer to questions as well.
 
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