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JasperJohnSon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2006
10
0
Hi. The latest dumb question from a newish Mac user:

When I have the Finder panel open, then open a Safari window, usually Safari opens on top of Finder - just like I would expect things to work.

But every now and then, maybe once in twenty times, Safari will open behind Finder.

Is this a bug?


It's not a huge deal - click the window and front it comes. I'm just curious why there would be this kind of inconsistant behaivior.
 

WildCowboy

Administrator/Editor
Staff member
Jan 20, 2005
18,375
2,801
Are you doing anything with Finder between the time you tell Safari to open the window and when it appears?

Sometimes when I click a link in Safari and then bring another window to the front while I wait for the previous one to load, the previous one will jump to the front when it's done loading. It doesn't happen very often, but it's a little annoying when it does it.
 

JasperJohnSon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2006
10
0
Thanks for the reply.

I suspect this isn't something that really has an answer. Like your example, which is similar, it just pops that way sometimes. But no, I'm not doing anything. (In the .5 seconds it takes for the browser window to open there's not much I could do anyway.)

This type of inconsistancy doesn't exatly give me unending confidence in the stability of the OS. So it's just odd and slightly troubling.
 

scan

macrumors 6502
Oct 24, 2005
344
0
Thanks for the reply.

I suspect this isn't something that really has an answer. Like your example, which is similar, it just pops that way sometimes. But no, I'm not doing anything. (In the .5 seconds it takes for the browser window to open there's not much I could do anyway.)

This type of inconsistancy doesn't exatly give me unending confidence in the stability of the OS. So it's just odd and slightly troubling.

are you serious? You're questioning a powerful and stable OS because which window is appearing on top?! Go take computer science and learn how a computer works. Let me explain something to you: Your computer environment is constantly evolving so things don't always behave the same way it does yesterday. Ever notice how sometimes something opens up really slow and then gets faster? Its your computer's environment evolving.
 

After G

macrumors 68000
Aug 27, 2003
1,583
1
California
Never had this happen to me.

This might be a dumb question to ask, but is the window that pops up without grabbing your attention some sort of ad? I get pop-unders that don't steal focus now that pop-ups are blocked with Safari's pop-up blocker and it annoys the heck out of me.

If you can reproduce it reliably, then it's a bug. I'm just wondering how you open a new window in Safari without bringing Safari into focus first? Because every time I try to open a Safari window without leaving Finder, Safari pops to the front like it should.
 

emptyCup

macrumors 65816
Jan 5, 2005
1,482
1
Occasionally this will happen to me because I click too many times on a application icon, or on a window, which then becomes the active window after another programs loads. I think this is what WildCowboy is referring to.
 

JasperJohnSon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2006
10
0
scan:

I'm questioning a "stable" OS because it crashes and hangs frequently. If this is how you describe "stable" then I guess I need to borrow your dictionary.

But I thank you for explaining how inconsistant behaivior is actually something I should appreciate. Silly me. After 18 years of daily computer use, I guess from now on I'll consider those fun little suprises "as designed".



And as an aside, I switched to Mac specifically because I <i>didn't</i> want to have to get a computer science degree. (So much for that plan.)
 

WildCowboy

Administrator/Editor
Staff member
Jan 20, 2005
18,375
2,801
It definitely shouldn't be regularly crashing and hanging on you...what kind of machine to you have and how much RAM do you have in it?
 
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