Open Bug 1361275 Opened 8 years ago Updated 4 years ago

Frequent focus changes between browser and mail window

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
General
Version:
SeaMonkey 2.46 Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: stefanehaas, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0 SeaMonkey/2.46 Build ID: 20161213183751 Steps to reproduce: The focus between the last used (non-minimized) mail and browser windows changes frequently without any trigger from user side, either spontaneous (not critical) but especially when typing e.g. a mail (critical). Actual results: The other window pops up, focus is changed and the input is interpreted in whatever is in the other window. Expected results: No automatic focus change without a focus-changing operation (new tab, change between windows). Especially when typing text it is not just annoying but creates unwanted interaction when text input is "redirected" into another window. This occurs frequently when "the other window" is not minimized.
This strange behavior is making it hard to use SeaMonkey as a working tool (i still have seamonkey-2.1b2pre.de.win32.installer.exe from 11/11/2010 in my install folder) as the spontaneous window switches makes it hard to type text without deleting message or other unwanted action in the other window(s). During this message it happened 3 times ... If this is going to last I have to switch to another tool in order to work properly again, but using FF and TB separately is quite some config work if you managed to have them in one up to now.
Severity: normal → major
Seems to be related to win10 slide show background mode (bkg change seems to force redraw of all windows
Build identifier: 20161213183751 SeaMonkey 2.46 I've had this happen for a couple of months, meaning the change of focus from browser to Mail or reverse, but not when writing an email. And it is happening in Windows 8.1 . As a way to stop it, I tried to use Firefox and Thunderbird, but I find SeaMonkey superior in other ways such as using AdBlock and Element Hiding in the Mail. So I'm back to the SeaMonkey suite and hoping for a resolution of the bug.
Do you have anything that refreshes the background at the time you observe the focus change? Try disabling and see whats happening. For me it was the windows slideshow background - which forced to redraw the windows in ARBITRARY order so that most likely you foremost window is somewhere else. Actually that is quite disturbing when you type text as the other windows will then "interpret" the key strokes as commands (e.g. jump, move, delete ...)
I have 8 tabs open most of the time, and the focus change is between the one I'm on and the Mail. I will pay more attention to refreshing a background, but I don't have anything that does so on its own. That would be very disturbing to have it interrupt writing an email or typing. I don't write many emails and they have been brief lately. The only thing I've suspected is that it has something to do with how long I've had SeaMonkey open and running. It seems to help to shut it down and reopen.
In fact I do have something that refreshes, and that is my IMAP mail account. My focus just changed a bit ago from the Mail window to the browser, but mail was not coming in at the time and browser tabs were not refreshing. Another thing I tried that seemed effective in stopping the change of focus was to use Thunderbird rather than SeaMonkey Mail with SeaMonkey browser. I'm considering trying SeaMonkey Mail with a different browser, but suspect that even with this issue, the general experience would be inferior.

I also see switches to MailNews without known reason with installation of unofficial (by wg9s) De SeaMonkey 2.53.2 beta 1 pre Mozilla/5.0 (NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0 Build 20200222130008 (Default Classic Theme, newly created User Profile) on German WIN7 64bit.

I will try to find out some more, currently I am no sure whether there is a relation to ail refresh, but it's a hot trail

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