#956 Window Focus in Task Coach

[Martin Fanta]

The TaskCoach may have multiple windows open at a time (main window, reminder windows, task edit windows, ...). When the user switches focus away from TaskCoach and then back to it, the same window should receive the focus IMHO (the window that had the focus when switching away). However, that is not the case. Could you please take a look at it?

Thanks
Martin

[Frank Niessink]

Hi Martin,

I tested this with Windows XP and Task Coach 1.2.30 and it works for me. How are you switching focus away and back from Task Coach?

Thanks, Frank

[Martin Fanta]

Hi Frank!

Thanks for looking into it.

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit.

Here's more detailed description:

I have TaskCoach open and there is one or more Reminder window open.

I click on the main window (into the main caption), so that it has focus. I press Alt-Enter to switch to some other running app. I press Alt-Tab again to switch back to TaskCoach. Now, the reminder window has the focus instead of the main TaskCoach window. The behavior is deterministic.

Thanks.
Martin

[Frank Niessink]

Hi Martin,

I tried it with Windows 8 (preview release) but it's way too buggy to do anything useful (Windows 8 preview that is). I don't have Windows 7, so I'm assigning this bug report to Jérôme who does.

Cheers, Frank

[Martin Fanta]

Hi guys,

any news regarding this problem? I'm still experiencing it in 1.3.23 and fixing it would really enhance my experience. It is most annoying when I'm creating a new task and I'm switching to an external application and back. Each time I switch back to TC, the main Window has focus and not the new task dialog, so I have to select the new task Window with a mouse to continue with the new task creation.

Other than that, TaskCoach rules ;-)

Thanks
Martin

[Jérome Laheurte]

A fix was made and checked into the source code repository of Task Coach. The fix will be part of the next release. You will get another notification when that release is available with the request to install the new release and confirm that your issue has indeed been fixed.

If you like, you can download a recent build from http://www.fraca7.net/TaskCoach-packages/latest_bugfixes.py to test the fix.

Because a fix has been made for this bug report, the priority of this report has been lowered to 1 and its resolution has been set to 'Fixed'.
Thanks, Task Coach development team

[Jérome Laheurte]

Ah, I just fixed the reminder dialog problem but I guess the editor is another one.

[Jérome Laheurte]

Should be fine now.

[Jérome Laheurte]

This bug should be fixed in the latest release of Task Coach. Can you please install the latest release of Task Coach and confirm that this bug has indeed been fixed?

Thanks, Task Coach development team

[Yves Forkl]

For me, TaskCoach 1.3.24 on Linux Mint 13 still steals the focus from the editor dialog and gives it to the main window after I have switched to another application window and back (using Alt-Tab).

However, I can confirm that reminder windows don't receive the focus any more. BUT: Is this desirable? Previously, I could simply hit enter to confirm that I have acknoledged the reminder. Now, I HAVE to use the mouse to take action on the reminder windows, e.g. to close it.

Martin and Frank, is this what you intended?

By contrast, when the focus has been in the editing windows, IMHO it really should return there when I'm switching back from another application, because it is a common use case to copy some info from elsewhere and paste it into the editing window.

How do you think about it?

[Jérome Laheurte]

Argh, I only tested on Windows 7, guess the behavior is different on each platform.

[Martin Fanta]

Just wrote quite a long answer only to have it lost when submitting at SourceForge, arrgh! Will try to write it once again.

I guess the correct way to behave would be assigning the focus back to the window that had it when switching away from TC, be it a reminder, task editor or the main window.

There are a few scenarios I have tested (1.3.24@Windows7):

Task Editor has focus->switch away and back->task editor has focus: an improvement over previous behavior - well done!

Main window has focus and a non-focused task editor is open->switch->task editor has focus: Not good.

Reminder window has focus->switch->main window has focus: Not good.

I was not brave enough to test a combination of reminder window, task editor and main window all open at once. I think it makes sense to test this once the basic scenarios are properly covered.

Thanks Jerome for looking into it, I can image these are not easy ones to fix!
Martin

[Jérome Laheurte]

Yeah, SF 2.0 eats up my comments too. Usually refreshing the page before trying to post helps.

I actually tried to make it so the window that had focus gets it back, but wx couldn't let me... I'll have to experiment with different window classes.

[Aaron Wolf]

Hi! Happy to be announcing, all these years later, that Task Coach is now updated to Python3 and development is finally active again, thanks to new volunteers. The project has now moved to https://github.com/taskcoach/taskcoach

I'm using it myself, and things are working better than ever. Packages are available for some common Linux systems and for Windows (note that it isn't recognized by Windows Smartscreen but can be installed by accepting the warning anyway)

We'd love to have you test the updated program, and post any issues that arise there at GitHub. We won't be continuing with SourceForge, just clearing out old issues and letting people know about the move.

Also notice that the in-program "check for updates" jcurrently ust goes to the GitHub link and does not, at this time, automatically alert you about updates. For now, to get alerts, you'll need to "watch" the releases at GitHub.

Cheers