In computing, focus stealing is a mode error produced when a program not in focus (e.g. minimized or operating in background) places a window in the foreground and redirects all keyboard input to that window. This is considered to be an annoyance or hazard to some users because the program may steal the focus while their attention is not on the computer screen, such as when typing while reading copy to the side. This will cause everything typed after the window appeared to be lost - or worse, the typed input may cause an unintended effect in the newly focused window. On slow computers, users are sometimes not even alerted to this behavior in time, because the associated window is only actually displayed several seconds after the actual focus change happened.
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Famous quotes containing the words focus and/or stealing:
“If your child is going to develop a healthy personality with the capacity to remain intact and grow, she must learn how to test reality, regulate her impulses, stabilize her moods, integrate her feelings and actions, focus her concentration and plan.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)
“As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)