Sometimes you can't win for losing. Honestly.
If new windows pop up in front of other windows, some people get ticked off. If new windows don't come to the front, some other people get ticked off. How in the world are we supposed to choose a default behavior?
I caught wind today of someone who was very angry that the chat window stole focus away from their game, and they uninstalled BitWise because "Trillian never did this so I'm using it instead." Wow, one checkbox and that problem would be solved; or go into away status when you're playing a game like many people do (last I knew, AIM would also steal focus out of games). On the other hand, I've had compliments that the windows come up right away so that they "don't get lost."
Oh, the joys of publicly releasing software. I don't mind being at the critical mercy of the world, in fact, it's the critical thinking of minds around the world that have tweaked BitWise here and there. In cases like this though, it just stinks.
Maybe someone else can make a decision and then we can just point all the blame at them, eh? ;)
done, and my decision is to NOT steal focus. you can now forward all complaints to me :-)
In most situations, I want IM windows to come to the front, but while playing a full-screen game, I want just the opposite. That's why I go "away" while playing games...
I suppose this is why I break up criticism into the categories of, "Research and Re-evaluate" and "Screw 'em."
I have issue with typing an email, working over SSH, etc. and having my focus 'stolen'.
Imagine entering a password (which is normally not echoed), only to find it appearing on a window in the background after figuring out why the password didn't work.