Software Focus Annoyances

I must really like to write these “annoyances” blog posts. Right now, I’d like to rant about programs stealing focus.

Just now, I got the idea for a blog post. I hate when people refer to a blog post as a blog. The blog is the entire framework to which you publish individual posts. I guess that’s for another annoyance rant.

I came up with an idea. I decided to launch Windows Live Writer. The splash screen came up. I then decided while WLW was loading, I’d switch back to Chrome and bring up Amazon so I can embed an affiliate link for a book I planned to mention.

What I mean by software focus is, the program demanding focus comes to the top. This is annoying, especially when a program goes through a few different phases while being brought up. That makes it almost impossible to get anything else done while the program is loading.

This is one of the reasons I refuse to use Norton Internet Security. I don’t care if it’s been completely reengineered. The 2005 version annoyed me so badly with it’s focus stealing that I uninstalled it and swore I’d never use it or any of it’s bastard children again. Whenever NIS would download updates, it would constantly steal focus from whatever I was doing to tell me what it was doing. If I was trying to write an email, my email window would go inactive while Norton flashed on the taskbar. Then I had to stop what I was doing to click on the Norton window, then go back to Outlook only to be interrupted by Norton once again.

It would be great if programs allowed you to get other work done while they load in the background, rather than constantly stealing focus from other programs while doing a childish “Look at me!” routine.