iTunes focus stealing

[gaving]

I'm pretty sure this never used to be an issue with an older version, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, any time I perform a particular "play" action with the iTunes functionality it has the effect of causing iTunes to end up stealing focus when playing the track. As you can imagine, this is particularly annoying especially if iTunes is on another space since it'll cause osx to move to that space (if you have the standard settings of the spaces functionality on - I know you can disable that behaviour more generally).

I'm not sure what the solution is here since (afaik) the iTunes module source is unavailable. I was going to take a look myself and see what the code (I'm presuming is apple script) is doing when it is 'telling' iTunes to play and see if I could figure out how to 'background' it.

Maybe not the right place, but can anyone relate to this? It might be a general issue with iTunes as a whole but as I said, I'm pretty sure this behaviour never used to happen. I'm on Snow Leopard with iTunes 9 with the latest build of quicksilver.

[pjrobertson]

Do you meant the "play", "Play-Pause" scripts that get installed when you install the iTunes module (found in the catalog under modules->iTunes->Control Scripts

I've just tested this and it's not stealing the focus for me.

Could it be a problem with your spaces settings? Do you have iTunes set to a single space, or ticked the checkbox "when switching to an application, switch to a space with....." at the bottom of the spaces prefs?

I don't have iTunes set to a certain space.

You could try opening the Applescript as opposed to running it and debugging it from script editor.

[gaving]

Hmmm, I didn't mean the actual "Play/Play-Pause" scripts since I tend just to use the standard keyboard shortcuts with osx. Now that I test those scripts they are fine and don't steal any focus.

Rather, what I mean rather is the act of selecting a track from the catalog, e.g. Say, I've at trigger setup to show all artists, I navigate into them with '/' -> (select an album) -> '/' -> (select a track). The selection of the track is the thing that seems to be stealing the focus here. Same with selecting any album, artist, etc.

Spaces screenshot:

I'm not sure if Spaces is the issue here since it seems to be iTunes that is the one asking for focus (which you've rightly just said doesn't seem to happen with the standard play/pause apple scripts!).

Cheers for the response.

[pjrobertson]

So it's the same as searching iTunes, right arrowing and drilling down to a song?

Still doesn't steal focus for me. You could try removing iTunes from space 3 to see if that makes a difference.

Could be the trigger?

[pjrobertson]

How about your QS settings?

[gaving]

Removed iTunes from space 3 (entirely) and still it is grabbing my focus something awful. Here are my preferences:-

Toggling all these to see if I can find something causing it. Having no luck so far though.

[pjrobertson]

Try setting your iTunes settings to those of mine (see above post) maybe 'fast browser play'?

[gaving]

Nah, having no luck after toggling every combination I can think of, replicating your settings and a combination of both (even after restarting quicksilver.)

Odd one. As I said, I'm on 10.6.2 with iTunes 9.0.2 and pretty sure this never used to happen but this would have been when I was on ~10.5 and with an older version of iTunes. Probably an issue with my setup :/

[pjrobertson]

Keep testing and get back to us if you find out why :)

I'm on 10.6.2 and iTunes 9.0.2 as well. QS is a strange beast.... :/

[gaving]

Yeah I will do. I hope someone else stumbles upon this and can relate to this behavior :) I've been living with it so long but the other day I just stopped and thought, yeah this is real irritating!

Thanks for your input, I guess you could close this ticket as a works for me.

[skurfer]

If AppleScript is the problem here, you may not need the source. The scripts in ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/PlugIns/iTunes Module.qsplugin/Contents/Resources/Scripts/ seem to be editable.

[pjrobertson]

Closed... hope everything's good for you now gaving!

[pjrobertson]

Closed