Okay, I've been sick and feeling rather unwell for over a week. Now it's time to get back into the game. And what better than to do so with a short but sweet rage post on how Windows is terrible? This time, I'm after Windows' tendency to steal window focus.
So you're typing/clicking/going about your normal business in everyone's favorite operating system then suddenly...
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| OH MY GOD, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! |
Okay, it may be over-exaggerating the situation just a bit, but the point is that there are some very devious things that Microsoft Windows is known to do (and versions past XP have done a bit to fix this issue). This particular issue is focus theft.
If you are typing in or otherwise using a program in Windows and one of Windows' services wants your attention, it doesn't have to scream and cry. It makes you listen to it. And it does so by using one of the worst attention grabbing mechanisms ever: not silently opening another window or service, not even blinking in the task bar to steer your eyes to the situation, but putting you in its context.
What can this lead to? If you're calmly and innocently minding your own business trying to do your work in Microsoft Word, and you just let Windows Update start its updating 10 minutes ago, well...Windows Update just finished. And it wants your attention. So it grabs it, and you accidentally hit that dreaded 'n' key. Look at the image above, and look at a single instance of the window. IF YOU HIT THAT 'N' KEY, THEN BABY, YOUR COMPUTER IS ON A ONE-WAY TRIP TO RESTART REALM. It doesn't matter if you were typing innocently in Word just mere nanoseconds ago, you hit Enter or you hit the 'n' key, you just sent a message to Windows telling it to restart now.
I swear, I have had this happen to me more times than I have fingers on my own two hands. I've been mere moments away from a restart, then quickly realized what was going on and cancelled it before Windows could enter shutdown mode. It happened today, even. It closed all of my programs and brought up the "still waiting for slow as hell services to slowly close...slowly" screen. I stopped it, but had to reopen everything I was working in. Fortunately I have Chrome and Firefox set to remember my tabs, so not too much was lost. But still!
It does it when you don't want it to, and more than just in cases of Windows Update. For example, Windows Live Movie Maker will, upon finishing its movie processing, steal the window focus from you and demand that you answer it ("Would you like to play the movie you just made?"). And this is just the icing on the spoiled cake for the equally spoiled operating system.
Please get it right, Windows. Don't steal focus, it's bad practice. And being an attention whore isn't good for your reputation.
