I should note that, although I don't know the specifics of the problem and so I can't say whether it's been fixed, Robert's answer is certainly not the whole truth. Metacity has no way of knowing whether a window needs input.
Metacity policy (and also the policy of any other sane WM, as Bogdan mentions) is that applications should never be able to steal focus. When a window attempts to steal focus, we intercept it and blink the icon on the taskbar, much as Windows does. Application authors often think this is a bad idea, and try to figure out ways of stealing focus, so we're always having to find new ways to stop them. (Of course, there are also bugs in our prevention mechanisms to fix.) It is possible that you have found a case where an application can steal focus; if so it is important it's fixed. Focus stealing is an important matter to us, almost as important as crashes, and I will make it a priority to fix things if you can give me a reproducible case we agree is a problem. -- 'Downloading package information' and 'building dependency tree' progress dialogs steal focus https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/35876 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to metacity in ubuntu. -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
