KDE-Forum.org

I am rather annoyed at a feature, that whenever a program does some kind of pop to front, or pop up, tries to steal focus, KDE windows manager seems to insist on switching to the particular desktop on which the application resides, which is VERY annoying when you're working on things such as writing documents, or other complicated tasks, it is VERY disruptive.

Is there anyway of stopping this, I have already set the focus stealing to extreme however it does stop the automatic desktop switch. I have searched both on google and all online help, however I have not found anything which addresses this issue.

any help or suggestions are very welcome.

regards
Michael Nielsen.

Unfortunately I have tried that solution that you describe here right up to extreme, it does not solve the desktop swapping issue.

I've tried it again, after your suggestion (hoping the problem has gone away in fedora 7), however when firefox pops up a download box the system flips to that desktop, no matter what I'm doing, absolutely a pain when you're in the process of editing tekst
or doing other work that requires concentration..

I know I can just run one task at a time, but that is the reason I'm running linux, and multiple (12) desktops, as I always have many tasks running, This desktop switching issue never used to happen, but I've had the problem at least since Fedora core 5.

I have even deleted the firefox bit under window-specific settings.

There appears to be no settings to prevent automatic desktop swapping.

If anyone has a solution, I'd be thrilled.

thanks.
regards
Michael Nielsen.

It is indeed bizarre, though all I wish for is the ability to block desktop switches which are not initiated by the user, unfortunately there seems to be no way of doing this.

I'm pretty sure, the issue is with the window manager.

I used to run enlightenment, and other window managers before both Gnome and KDE made it virtually impossible to swap the window manager out with another one, at least I've not found an easy way to load an abitrary window manager in under KDE or even Gnome now, and most of the features that used to be available in window managers have been removed from KDE and Gnome, in the name of userfriendliness - sad really.

uh well if anyone runs across anything that addresses the issue with applications forcing desktop swaps, I'd be really happy with a pm, or a message here.

(OFC i could go away from Firefox, but what about the next application who thinks it's ok to arbitrarily swap desktops).

regards
Michael Nielsen.

I seem to have found a solution,

Add a windows specific setting to the control-center under desktop/windows-specific settings in the tab workarounds select focus stealing prevention, choose force, and set to extreme.

But Why does it not work, when I ask the entire system to block focus stealing, with the global extreme focus-stealing prevention setting ???

Why is it necessary to add a specific one for an application - is this a bug ?

regards
mike.

Dunno, if it's the distro, using Fedora 7, but I've been having problems for a very long time.

Anyhow, it is now working a lot better, just a bit odd having to use that particular workaround.

regards
mike.