How do I stop windows stealing the foreground?

[Richard van Wegen]

Hi All

Does anyone know how I can prevent background windows
from promoting themselves to the foreground and stealing
the focus?

Essentially, I want to prevent any window from being
promoted to the foreground unless I click on it in the
taskbar (or Alt-Tab, etc). Is this possible?

For example, when I click on a link in Explorer, the page
starts loading, I switch to another window and type
something else, then in the middle of my sentence the
Explorer window makes itself the foreground and the
second half of my sentence gets lost. This drives me
nuts. It's especially bad when (eg) I'm typing in a
password to log on to a website. It happens with all
applications, not just Explorer.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Dave Patrick]

You might get your desired result by adjusting;

"ForegroundLockTimeout"
Specifies the time, following user input, during which the system will not
allow applications to force themselves into the foreground.

and

"ForegroundFlashCount"
Determines the number of times the taskbar button will flash to notify the
user that a background window has been activated by the system. If the time
elapsed since the last user input exceeds the value of
"ForegroundLockTimeout", the window will automatically be brought to the
foreground.

The D_Word values can be found at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Setting them to zero should effectively disable them.


--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Hi All
|
| Does anyone know how I can prevent background windows
| from promoting themselves to the foreground and stealing
| the focus?
|
| Essentially, I want to prevent any window from being
| promoted to the foreground unless I click on it in the
| taskbar (or Alt-Tab, etc). Is this possible?
|
| For example, when I click on a link in Explorer, the page
| starts loading, I switch to another window and type
| something else, then in the middle of my sentence the
| Explorer window makes itself the foreground and the
| second half of my sentence gets lost. This drives me
| nuts. It's especially bad when (eg) I'm typing in a
| password to log on to a website. It happens with all
| applications, not just Explorer.
|
| Cheers
| Richard