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This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). The focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the content of the original notebook now in the back. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens "if the Manipulate [or other dynamic content] contains something that's computationally expensive" (Sjoerd's comment below, and I can confirm this), mostly when complex 2D or 3D plots are manipulated directly (e.g. 3D rotate with mouse) or indirectly (mouse driven slider changes parameters of dynamic plot).

For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all. A more or less solid way to reproduce the error:

• open a fresh Mathematica
• open a new notebook (by e.g. ctrl+N; this will be the one that will pop to the front; this can be any window, i.e. any notebook you can open)
• open another notebook, paste above code
• evaluate code (dragging the 3D plot now won't trigger the glitch, or only very rarely)
• bring in front any other application, e.g. Firefox
• get back to Mathematica (by e.g. minimizing Firefox)
• dragging the 3D plot around for some time (~5-10 sec) has a high chance to trigger the glitch, which can manifest as short "jumps" of open Mathematica windows where one gets in the front for a fraction of a second)

Does anyone else experience this annoyance?

What causes this behaviour?

This happens even if no other application is running, just Mathematica 8.0.*. System is Win7/64, integrated Intel HD graphics. An example is below. While I was dragging the second slider from top, another window popped up covering the actual notebook. Note that the focus is not changed, thus the original notebook is still the active one behind the obtruding one, and the slider can be manipulated behind Untitled-4.

This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). The focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the content of the original notebook now in the back. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens "if the Manipulate [or other dynamic content] contains something that's computationally expensive" (Sjoerd's comment below, and I can confirm this), mostly when complex 2D or 3D plots are manipulated directly (e.g. 3D rotate with mouse) or indirectly (mouse driven slider changes parameters of dynamic plot).

For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all. A more or less solid way to reproduce the error:

• open a fresh Mathematica
• open a new notebook (by e.g. ctrl+N; this will be the one that will pop to the front; this can be any notebook window)
• open another notebook, paste above code
• evaluate code (dragging the 3D plot now won't trigger the glitch, or only very rarely)
• bring in front any other application, e.g. Firefox (though the glitch could happen even if no other application is running)
• get back to Mathematica (by e.g. minimizing Firefox)
• dragging the 3D plot around for some time (~5-10 sec) has a high chance to trigger the glitch, which can manifest as short "jumps" of open Mathematica windows where one gets in the front for a fraction of a second)

Does anyone else experience this annoyance?

What causes this behaviour?

This is still reproducible under Mathematica 9.0.1, Windows 7.

This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). The focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the content of the original notebook now in the back. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens "if the Manipulate [or other dynamic content] contains something that's computationally expensive" (Sjoerd's comment below, and I can confirm this), mostly when complex 2D or 3D plots are manipulated directly (e.g. 3D rotate with mouse) or indirectly (mouse driven slider changes parameters of dynamic plot).

For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all. A more or less solid way to reproduce the error:

• open a fresh Mathematica
• open a new notebook (by e.g. ctrl+N; this will be the one that will pop to the front; this can be any window, i.e. any notebook you can open)
• open another notebook, paste aboce code in it
• evaluate code (dragging the 3D plot now won't trigger the glitch, or only very rarely)
• bring in front any other application, e.g. Firefox
• get back to Mathematica (by e.g. minimizing Firefox)
• dragging the 3D plot around for some time (~5-10 sec) has a high chance to trigger the glitch, which can manifest as short "jumps" of open Mathematica windows where one gets in the front for a fraction of a second)

Does anyone else experience this annoyance?

What causes this behaviour?

This happens even if no other application is running, just Mathematica 8.0.*. System is Win7/64. An example is below. While I was dragging the second slider from top, another window popped up covering the actual notebook. Note that the focus is not changed, thus the original notebook is still the active one behind the obtruding one, and the slider can be manipulated behind Untitled-4.

This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). The focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the content of the original notebook now in the back. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens "if the Manipulate [or other dynamic content] contains something that's computationally expensive" (Sjoerd's comment below, and I can confirm this), mostly when complex 2D or 3D plots are manipulated directly (e.g. 3D rotate with mouse) or indirectly (mouse driven slider changes parameters of dynamic plot).

For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all. A more or less solid way to reproduce the error:

• open a fresh Mathematica
• open a new notebook (by e.g. ctrl+N; this will be the one that will pop to the front; this can be any window, i.e. any notebook you can open)
• open another notebook, paste above code
• evaluate code (dragging the 3D plot now won't trigger the glitch, or only very rarely)
• bring in front any other application, e.g. Firefox
• get back to Mathematica (by e.g. minimizing Firefox)
• dragging the 3D plot around for some time (~5-10 sec) has a high chance to trigger the glitch, which can manifest as short "jumps" of open Mathematica windows where one gets in the front for a fraction of a second)

Does anyone else experience this annoyance?

What causes this behaviour?

This happens even if no other application is running, just Mathematica 8.0.*. System is Win7/64, integrated Intel HD graphics. An example is below. While I was dragging the second slider from top, another window popped up covering the actual notebook. Note that the focus is not changed, thus the original notebook is still the active one behind the obtruding one, and the slider can be manipulated behind Untitled-4.

This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). Strangely, the focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the slider. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens with any slider, during mouse-rotating 3D graphics, or manipulating a locator. It seems like mostly mouse-dragging causes this, but I could not figure out more specific details in the last one year. I'm not even sure whether it only happens when Mathematica is running fullscreen or not. Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all.

No other application is running, just Mathematica 8.0.4 (it happened with 8.0.1 as well). System is Win7/64. An example is below. While I was dragging the second slider from top, another window popped up covering the actual notebook. Note that the focus is not changed, thus the original notebook is still the active one behind the obtruding one, and the slider can be manipulated behind Untitled-4.

Update

As I am now investigating this issue in detail, I've realized that it is more the 3D graphics than the actual slider that causes the problem. For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Sliders seem to cause the issue only if they are linked to a plot (not necessarily 3D!) that is updated as the slider moves. It does not mean that the slider directly rotates the plot, but can cause any update of the plot, e.g. in the underlying function that is plotted.

Starting up a fresh Mathematica, opening a new empty notebook, opening another one to put the above code, evaluate it and rotate plot - the behaviour does not show.

Starting up a fresh Mathematica, opening an existing notebook that contains code and graphics, opening a new empty notebook, put the above code, evaluate it and rotate plot - the other notebook sometimes comes to the front. It even happens if the notebook does not contain a figure, but seems to be less frequent. Example code I used for other notebook (noting that any code seems to cause this):

RandomBlot[num_, opts___] := Module[{pts}, pts = RandomReal[{0, 1}, {num, 2}]; pts = pts[[ Append[Last@FindShortestTour[pts, Method -> "TwoOpt"], 1]]]; Graphics[{Polygon@ Table[BSplineFunction[pts, SplineKnots -> "Clamped"][a], {a, 0, 1, 0.001}]}, opts] ]; blot = RandomBlot[40, ImageSize -> 200, AspectRatio -> 1] 

In general, the behaviour is quite intractable.

This is now bugging me too much to ignore it anymore. When I interact with a notebook that has dynamic content, for example moving a slider, Mathematica regularly brings other open notebook windows to the front. This means that while I am interacting with the given notebook, some other notebook (already opened, but in the background) pops up in the front, either blocking my view or just staying in the lower-left corner (if it was minimized before). The focus is not changed, so I can still interact with the content of the original notebook now in the back. When I continue manipulation, the front notebook disappears, just to reappear again a few seconds later. This is extremely annoying and happens "if the Manipulate [or other dynamic content] contains something that's computationally expensive" (Sjoerd's comment below, and I can confirm this), mostly when complex 2D or 3D plots are manipulated directly (e.g. 3D rotate with mouse) or indirectly (mouse driven slider changes parameters of dynamic plot).

For example rotating the following 3D figure with the mouse causes the behaviour to present itself.

Plot3D[Sin[x + y^2], {x, -3, 3}, {y, -2, 2}] 

Reproducibility is occasional, sometimes it happens fairly frequently, sometimes not at all. A more or less solid way to reproduce the error:

• open a fresh Mathematica
• open a new notebook (by e.g. ctrl+N; this will be the one that will pop to the front; this can be any window, i.e. any notebook you can open)
• open another notebook, paste aboce code in it
• evaluate code (dragging the 3D plot now won't trigger the glitch, or only very rarely)
• bring in front any other application, e.g. Firefox
• get back to Mathematica (by e.g. minimizing Firefox)
• dragging the 3D plot around for some time (~5-10 sec) has a high chance to trigger the glitch, which can manifest as short "jumps" of open Mathematica windows where one gets in the front for a fraction of a second)

What causes this behaviour?

This happens even if no other application is running, just Mathematica 8.0.*. System is Win7/64. An example is below. While I was dragging the second slider from top, another window popped up covering the actual notebook. Note that the focus is not changed, thus the original notebook is still the active one behind the obtruding one, and the slider can be manipulated behind Untitled-4.