Comment 8 for bug 54127

This has now become a very serious usability issue with Ubuntu as there are far too many applications that have started stealing focus.

This is something that should be absolutely forbidden and it should be a condition of getting an application into the Ubuntu repositories that it does steal focus. In fact this should be enforced in the GUI toolkits and it should not be possible for a developer to make an app steal focus without jumping through hoops.

For instance: I have just installed the "GNU ConvertAudioFile" script so I can convert 200 small WAV soundbytes I have created into mp3 format. Not only does this script popup a progress dialogue (with a single "Cancel" button ) and steal focus it will also pop the bloody thing up on whichever workspace I switch to.

Needless to say this meant that a good percentage of conversion operations were inadvertently cancelled whilst I was trying to type this bug report (the spacebar being accepted as a click on the cancel button) In fact I eventually had to kill X with "Ctrl+Alt+Backspace" to get back to a sane desktop (I couldn't even use a terminal as the focus kept getting stolen) and I had to retype this report in from scratch.

Sorry but it totally UNACCEPTABLE for this bloody awful UI design to continue. This problem has been getting steadily worse for a while now as all sorts of programs (including such things as Update Manager) have started doing it too.

Please fix this behaviour as a matter of utmost priority as it really is totally ruining the Ubuntu desktop experience.

If I wanted this crappy behaviour I'd be sticking to Windows.