Question about window focus in OSX

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

Soldato
Joined
29 Sep 2003
Posts
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Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Let's say I have Firefox open, full screen. Someone messages me on MSN, so I pull up that window, reply to the message, and minimise it again. After minimising the chat window, Firefox doesn't automatically retake focus, meaning I have to click somewhere in the Firefox window to bring it back to life again. Is there a way to get background windows to automatically retake focus when they become foreground windows? It's proving to be quite irritating so far, and I can't find a way to change it :mad:

Thanks!
 
Ever thought about using Spaces? If you put firefox in one space and msn in another all you would need to do is click in the dock and it will go to either msn or firefox in full focus.
 
just a tip, but you don't really have to minimise your messenger. The only time I use the minimise function is when I have many documents open in a single apps (say a bunch of PDFs open in preview) and want to move some away to read later. There is nothing wrong with leaving your messenger window open in the background. When you get a message you can either click on the rock icon to bring the window into focus and then click on the firefox window when you are done (just a single click).

Also look into exposé, setting it up as hot corners through system prefs makes moving bewteen windows nice and quick.
 
Use Hide (Command + H) and you'll get the behaviour that you want.

It seems like a lot of people don't know about Hide, or just use Minimize because it's a familiar term from MS Windows (even though it's a different concept on OS X - remember than an application is distinct from its window(s)).
 
Last edited:
Exposé is perfect for this.

I have mine configured on Mouse button 4 :)
 
EVH said:
Exposé is perfect for this.

I have mine configured on Mouse button 4 :)
Click to expand...

Mouse button 3 here :-) if you still use windows a lot you'll find it a pain to use if you get used to the expose way of working :-) Vista has something similar but all of the XP ones I've used have been terrible.
 
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