Garth Kidd (of iPodder development fame) has joined forces with Nicole Simon (that’s zee-mohn to the USians out there) to begin the “Don’t steal my focus” initiative.

Nicole has asked those of us who share their predilection to blog about it, so here I am, blogging it.

This issue has bothered me for a long time. I sometimes run 20+ different applications at the same time, and windows seems to think that it knows what I need to pay attention to better than I do. Almost more bothersome to me than the warning / alerts that pop up while I’m working away are the applications that try to take focus several times while they’re starting up. I believe this aspect of the issue is just rude developement - those developers have chosen to bring their apps to the foreground. If I put it in the background, it’s there for a frelling reason! Don’t tell me what to look at. It’s application SPAM!

OK, I know I was irritated about this, but I had no idea that I was quite so worked up. It never occurred to me that other people might be irritated, let alone to start a blog campaign - thank you Nicole and Garth for raising my consciousness.

They’ve also put out a hinted request for a button for signatories of the initiative. I’m no graphic designer, but I made 2 that might fit the bill:

I these are remotely to anyone’s liking then I’d be happy to make some modifications to fit spec. I envision them linking to a page with the names of the bloggers who have signed on, but that’s just me.

Let me know what you all think, both of the buttons and of Nicole and Garth’s idea.

Robert Scoble, Bill Gates! Are you guys listening?