Focus Stealing Prevention

[Richard Stellingwerff]

Hi,

I'd like to make a little feature request. I don't have a bugzilla
account on xfce.org, and I don't intend to make one either, so I'm
doing it here. I hope that's OK with your guys.

-- THE PROBLEM --

Something I feel that's missing in XFCE is focus stealing prevention.
I'm sure all of you have experienced how annoying it is when a window
pops up while you're typing. It can result in accidently closing the
popup (without even knowing what it was), or sending something to
someone through an instant message on gaim (just to name an example).
Imagine this could be your password. Ouch.

Some applications will let you disable focus stealing, but many
things, like popup messages, ignore this. Besides, fixing this problem
per application is a silly thing to do anyway, since it's the task of
the Window Manager.

Now, without saying more things that people could disagree with, I
have the following solution in mind.


-- THE SOLUTION --

The Window Manager (XFWM4) should ONLY give focus to a new window when
the user hasn't typed anything in the last 2/10th of a second (just to
name a number). So basically, when someone is typing something in a
window, the user would not be disturbed by any sudden new windows. The
window that requested focus should get the URGENT state, so that the
window will screem for attention by flashing.

It sounds like a simple idea on paper, though I have absolutely no
idea if it's easy to implement. If I remember correctly, both KDE and
GNOME (in FC4 I think) already have this feature.

I hope you guys like this idea too. 

Kind regards,
Richard Stellingwerff.