[Pidgin] #9205: Pidgin steals focus while typing passwords

[Pidgin]

#9205: Pidgin steals focus while typing passwords
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 Reporter:  yohell                         |        Owner:              
     Type:  defect                         |       Status:  pending     
Milestone:                                 |    Component:  pidgin (gtk)
  Version:  2.5.2                          |   Resolution:              
 Keywords:  focus steal password security  |  
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Changes (by deryni):

  * status:  new => pending


Comment:

 It happened because pidgin created a new window and metacity focuses new
 windows by default (unless they play along and/or specifically force it
 not to).

 Agreed, focus stealing is just plainly and simply evil.

 Yes, I consider the default Gnome + metacity combination brain-dead. And
 as you should be aware the default focus policy in metacity is that new
 windows get the focus, you may not see this as much as you might otherwise
 if you only use Gnome applications because they all work very hard to work
 together (and with the metacity focus stealing prevention code) to not do
 this, however that only sort of works (has caused us and them bug reports
 in the past when it fails) and is as sub-optimal a solution to the problem
 as I've ever seen.

 I don't know how much you can do in Gnome/metacity to keep it from
 focusing new pidgin windows/dialogs, but that is what the focus stealing
 prevention code in metacity is supposed to do (but it isn't exactly
 configurable in any meaningful way).

 A 'Do Not Disturb' mode in pidgin is not an unreasonable option, but has
 enough possible implementations as to make it not particularly simple to
 implement. A plugin could likely be made to do this almost perfectly
 (though a few things may sneak through I'm not sure, you'd have to try it
 and see). I would like to stress however that with a controllable enough
 environment this is doable without pidgin changes (for example I can tell
 my wm to display all pidgin windows on a given workspace regardless of
 where I am and what I am doing when they are created).

 By default I mean a pre-selected response, which allows for a single press
 of the space or enter keys to accept and dismiss the dialog. Dialogs
 without such a default require more effort to dismiss and are thus much
 less susceptible to 'blind' submission.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/9205#comment:5>
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