Secret Firefox Trick: Prevent Browser from Stealing Focus
Here is probably one of the most useful Firefox hack that I have encountered in the recent times - it prevents me from lot of frustration and saves lot of time.Problem Description: Say, you have set Firefox as your default web browser. So when you click an external hyperlink in another application or file like a Microsoft Word document, Adobe PDF file, Outlook email or your desktop newsreader, the corresponding webpage is automatically opened inside Firefox.
Excellent but the problem here is that Firefox browser window takes away the focus from the current application and sends that application to the background. So I have to minimize Firefox each time or click the application icon in the Windows status bar to bring back Microsoft Outlook or Word to the foreground.
Why stealing focus frustrates me ? When I am reading RSS feeds inside a news reader (in my case, FeedDemon) I keep clicking on URLs that I find interesting but at the same time, I want to remain inside my RSS reader. Only when I have finished reading all my unread news items, I want go back to the browser window and read the webpages from there.
Firefox Hack to prevent the focus problem It is actually very simple to instruct Firefox so that it opens a new tab from a link sent by another application but continue to run in the background. Here are the steps:
1. Open a new Firefox tab and type about:config
2. In the Filter bar, type browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground
3. The value of this is False by default. Double click the line to toggle it and set it to True.
4. Restart Firefox.
More Firefox Hacks:
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Reader Comments:
It opens the tabs in the background, but Firefox still steals the focus.
Nice to reach here, just started using Firefox...will relate to lot of stuff shown here and get back to specifics as we move along
Thats a nice hack, useful for me too, I use Liferea as my feed reader.
Great tip, this is a very annoying problem. You can also prevent IE from stealing focus by downloading the PowerToy from Microsoft, TweakUI, available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
It includes a lot of little secret registry modifications in Windows that only advanced users know about. It also has an option to prevent IE from stealing focus, as mentioned.
Like someone has said it does not work.
It makes the tabs load in background but Firefox itself still steals focus
Even though this is a technical site (I am a physician)I find it very useful. Will put in my favorites.
I tried this but Firefox 2.0.0.3 is still stealing focus. You don't even have to click on a link in another application, just wait a minute. The damn Firefox window keeps popping up on top of all my other open apps!
Very annoying, especially when trying to type in another window! (a bug has been submitted to Mozilla, but it has not been acted on yet).
Theodric Young
This is a fix to stop firefox from switching tabs when you open a link in a new tab, not a fix to stop firefox it's self from stealing focus from other programs. To do that you need to, as pogue said above, download TweakUI and select the option to disable focus stealing.
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