Applications stealing focus - reg key no longer fixes

Yes there is confusion, steeling focus may well be prevented in Win7 but there are plenty of legitimate ways that windows can 'CLAIM' focus, all are repeatable.

For example, I will be writing an email and know that when I've finished I want to use Adobe InDesign. So I click the taskbar icon for InDesign and it starts loading. This is going to take a while so I go back to the email and keep typing. At some point InDesign finishes loading and steals focus from the email I'm writing.

You can swap pretty much any program into this scenario.

I know that for many users this feature is what they want. But for me it is annoying. The worst case is loading a program that has shortcut keys that do serious things without an undo. I'll be happily typing away and the new program steals focus, I hit a critical shortcut key without realising it. A pop-up appears and asks if I'm sure I want to do this un-reversable action. Before I have realised what is happening I have hit the spacebar, which of course actions the highlight 'YES' I'm sure I want to do this stupid thing and some important document gets trashed and I need to spend ages fixing it.

Admittedly it is rare that this serious scenario occurs, but ALL these focus changing events are frustrating. I DO NOT WANT TO WASTE TIME WAITING FOR THINGS TO LOAD just because if I try and do something else it might mess things up when the focus changes without my permission. I want to multi-task, what is the point of having a PC that can have multiple applications running if you have to do tasks one at a time? When I am ready to attend to the event that an application has flagged I will attend to it, in the mean time I want to finish the other task that has MY FOCUS.

I am happy for the application to flash in the task bar to inform me that it wants attention, I do not want it interupting me in the middle of a rant on a forum!

I hope this clears up the misunderstanding some people here have, that we are moaning about something that doesn't happen or is rare.

I honestly can't reproduce it.  Previously in this same thread I've posted pictures and video of me trying.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen -- I'm saying that there must be a reason that we haven't discovered.  I wish I had a system image I could compare it to and scour the registry or DWM memory dumps to find out what is the difference.

Yes there is confusion, steeling focus may well be prevented in Win7 but there are plenty of legitimate ways that windows can 'CLAIM' focus, all are repeatable.

For example, I will be writing an email and know that when I've finished I want to use Adobe InDesign. So I click the taskbar icon for InDesign and it starts loading. This is going to take a while so I go back to the email and keep typing. At some point InDesign finishes loading and steals focus from the email I'm writing.

You can swap pretty much any program into this scenario.

I know that for many users this feature is what they want. But for me it is annoying. The worst case is loading a program that has shortcut keys that do serious things without an undo. I'll be happily typing away and the new program steals focus, I hit a critical shortcut key without realising it. A pop-up appears and asks if I'm sure I want to do this un-reversable action. Before I have realised what is happening I have hit the spacebar, which of course actions the highlight 'YES' I'm sure I want to do this stupid thing and some important document gets trashed and I need to spend ages fixing it.

Admittedly it is rare that this serious scenario occurs, but ALL these focus changing events are frustrating. I DO NOT WANT TO WASTE TIME WAITING FOR THINGS TO LOAD just because if I try and do something else it might mess things up when the focus changes without my permission. I want to multi-task, what is the point of having a PC that can have multiple applications running if you have to do tasks one at a time? When I am ready to attend to the event that an application has flagged I will attend to it, in the mean time I want to finish the other task that has MY FOCUS.

I am happy for the application to flash in the task bar to inform me that it wants attention, I do not want it interupting me in the middle of a rant on a forum!

I hope this clears up the misunderstanding some people here have, that we are moaning about something that doesn't happen or is rare.

Yes - this happens for me too.

Start Outlook, for example, and when it finally springs into life it steals your focus from wherever you are.

Start a debug cycle in Visual Studio - one with a long build time - and then start writing an email. When the program has completed compiling it will launch and steal / claim your focus.