No, by pop up dialogs I don't mean pop up browser windows. Those are a pain also, but IE and Firefox offer us some protection. And yes, this is mainly a desktop issue which is about the environment that mobile devices live in. But pretty soon (especially with the new UMPCs) it will become an issue for mobile computing, if it's not already.
What I'm talking about are the dialog boxes that applications pop up out of nowhere, and which get immediate focus no matter what you happen to be doing at the time.
So what's the problem? Well, I tend to do many things at once on the computer. I have things running in the background while I am doing other things in the foreground. So suppose a program finishes in the background while I'm typing. What happens? It pops up a dialog box saying "I'm done." Unfortunately, I'm a fairly fast typer also, so odds are, I'm going to hit a key that takes action. Usually the space key to accept the default choice. I'm left wondering what the heck was that dialog box that just popped up, and what did I just instruct that program to do?!!!!
I'm getting pretty tired of interacting accidentally with popup dialog boxes or other GUI elements by accident, and I'm wondering:
1) When will something very bad happen as a result?
What happens if a dialog box with <commit changes> and <delete all> pops up and I happen to type TAB space space? Do I end up deleting everything and confirming the delete all before I even realize a dialog box popped up!?
2) Why doesn't Microsoft set something up as an option in Windows so that you can be notified, but that another background program can't grab focus unless you ask for it. All I want is to know another program wants to interact with me. But I want control of when I switch my focus to another application. Especially with programs that present a higher risk of inadvertant interaction. Shouldn't Windows support some sort of safer app switching?
3) Do Linux or other O/S's have any support for this kind of situation?
Has anyone even thought of this issue before? Anyone else wondering the same thing, or am I an irrelevant outlier as far as users are concerned?