Mac Help windows always on top

Is there a way to turn off the Mac Help windows from always appearing on top of all other windows opened?
I thought there was an option to turn this off somewhere but I can't remember where. I checked all my settings in Cocktail and System Preferences but no such luck.
-- Jeff

Thank you very much Baltwo.
-- Jeff

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Help windows always foremost

I use Help frequently, particularly with a new system but also with applications. In Leopard the Help window is always on top. Often I find myself in the position of wishing to keep the Help file available but have an application window come to the front to work in the app. While the window of said app will become active the Help window always floats on top. I find it very annoying.
Is there a preference to change that behavior? A hack?
thanks

I too think this behavior is goofy in the extreme. You have the Help window open so you can work back and forth between Help and whatever you are doing: if the Help window is always on top you can't see what you are trying to do. What were they thinking? I was unable to find any way to fix this, although there might be such a way by modifying a plist somewhere and tell it to turn off always frontmost. Afraid I'm not enough of a hacker to know how one would go about this. Let's hope somewhere there is such a hacker who is annoyed enough to do it. You can't even hide the thing, it is always frontmost and will not hide, the best you can do is minimize it to the Dock. Sent feedback to Apple about this:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/
At the moment that's best we can do.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Windows "Always on Top"

I am trying to get a window to "always remain on top" or float above all windows, regardless of where I click. For example, if you zoom Itunes into a smaller window, it always floats above all windows. How do I do this with other windows? It helps when working on multiple applications to keep a source document in a window "always on top" and prevented from being hidden.

Thank you. That seemed to do the trick.
Is it possible that my panels in CS3 were always floating, allowing me to prevent them from being covered? I'm just thinking that it seems odd that panels could be covered at all. You loose a lot of editing abilities when one can't see them!

How to keep window always on top?

I use afloat to keep most of the window always on top but it doesn't work for some apps like excel, textwrangler etc...
How can I make excel, textwrangler etc.. to stay on top even if I focus on some other apps?

AFAIK, you can't. When you change focus the app assumes you want to use it.

Dragging Document Windows - (Always On Top)?

PS CS4 - latest
A few times, I've dragged a document window over(on top of) a set of panels (layers,channels, etc). Once I let go of the mouse, the title bar of that window (the draggable bar) is placed behind the panels (I'm in standard screen mode). Most of the time this isn't an issue, and probably because I've never dragged a small enough document window over a panel set for this to be an issue worth asking about (all times before, the document window was wide enough to extend out behind the panel(s), so I was still able to click on the title bar. So, after moving this small window and letting go of the mouse, the title bar is completely hidden behind the panel. I know I can move the panels around and/or minimize the panels, but I'm wondering if there is a setting where you can have your document windows (always on top) of other panels?

If you loose a window behind your panels just hit the tab key which hides all tool bars and panels, drag out your window and hit tab key to make your tools/panels visible again. Panels will always be on top of windows.

My "Mac Help" window is crashing....

so every time i open the mac help window and type something in the search box and hit return the whole windows just closes. I'm not sure why this is happening. am i doing something wrong?

Kappy wrote:
Do you have any such folders on your computer? I do not find any in the Caches folder on mine. They disappeared after installing Leopard. I found that simply deleting the .plist files fixed the problem in Leopard.
yes, I've got them along with the plist files. I have com.apple.helpdata and com.apple.helpui in ~/Library/Caches.

Mac File Site window always on top

I am using Dreamweaver 8.0, but have seen this exact same
issue on a Windows CS3 install and a Mac CS3 install.
I like to have the Files Window detached from the right side,
and expanded so I can see the Remote Site and Local Files lists
side by side. When I open an html file, I expect the html file to
open on top of the file list window. It works this way on some
installs, but not on others, very annoying. In the problem
installs, I must manually move the file (site) window way down to
the right to expose the html file I want to work on. Then when I
want open another html file, I have to drag it file window back up,
to see my file list, double click on the file, and then move the
file list back out of the way.
In other words, in the problem setups, the File Window is
"always on top", so it must be a preference or setting, but I
cannot figure out.
Please help me fix this annoying problem.
mark

I'm having the exact same problem in DW CS5 now. Did you find a solution? Hitting fn+F8 isn't going to work on my iMac extended keyboard. F8 is the iTunes play pause button. Besides, having to command-tab to an app THEN hit fn+F8 just isn't going to work obviously.
I can't believe in 2010 this is broken.
Please do let me know if you found a way around it. I tried all the different layout prefabs in CS5, and without exception they all do it.

Why the office windows always on top of others - how to change it back?!!

I'm using mac os x and office 2011.
Since maybe couple weeks ago (maybe after one of the office upgrades?), when I have multiple office windows opened (e.g., multiple word documents, excel, powerpoint), these windows always appear on top of others (e.g., safari, calendar) first!
Here is an example: now i'm using safari, so it's my active window. If I want to go to calendar (which is already opened), when I click the calendar window, all the office windows (which are opened as well) will jump out first!! Then I have to click the calendar again to make it become on top of the office windows. That means, whenever I want to switch to other windows while office windows are opened, I have to click all the other windows twice, because the first time I click on any other type of window, the office windows will jump out no matter what.
This is very annoying after a while. I'm not sure if I explained this clear enough. But how can I change the settings so the office windows can just not always on top of other windows??!!

Yes, I can view/hide the OSK with no problem but the keyboard, itself, changed somehow.

Must 'Help' Windows Stay on Top?

Is there a way to have the 'Help" window act as every other window? When I am reading through a 'Help' topic the window always stays on top of all the other open windows. But when I want to return to my application the "Help" screen never recedes.

That's one of the many items in the Leopard user interface that makes you wonder what in the world they were thinking, and if the project managers ever actually use their computers for anything other than to see if their project crashes something. You can change the behavior using Terminal.
defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -bool true
Just launch Terminal, copy and paste the above line, and press the Return button. I don't remember whether it was necessary to log out and back in for it take effect.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Firefox windows, always on top ?

Since my upgrade to Leopard my browser windows are always on top, even when I open the dashboard widgets. So I can't see half of them.
The window will be grey [inactive] but refuses to disappear to the background and make room for my desktop or whatever window I want to see. Only minimize will make it disappear. Firefox has been updated to the latest version, so that is not the problem.
Anybody ?

I've been having this problem for the last few days and it's driving me insane. I read that if you disable the 'show downloads window' in the preferences, the problem seems to go away. This is not the case for me. I have restarted, etc. but the dang thing keeps doing it and I can't figure out the trigger.
Any other ideas? I'm seriously considering switching to the 3 Beta, but I don't want to lose the few add-ons I use.
Thanks!

Force quitting a "Mac Help" Window

I was using Numbers on iWork 08 and I clicked the *"Mac Help"* on the main option bar. I typed a question and the Mac Help froze. I assumed that if I closed the Numbers application, that the Mac Help would then clear away. Apparently the problem was not within the Numbers Application, but simply just with Mac Help. I tried force quitting but when I open Force Quit to select Mac Help as one of the programs I quit, it isn't listed in the options. It still has the little Pinwheel showing the Mac Help is loading, and it's been that way for the past hour. It can manually move it around the screen, but it stays in front of whatever windows I have open. I cannot delete it, and the only way I can see it clearing from my screen would be to restart my computer. I do not want to do this, and I am just wondering if there is another way of *force quitting the Mac Help*.

Try this:
Open *Activity Monitor* in Applications>Utilities. Sort these by "Process Name." Find *Help Viewer*, then click the *Force Quit* button (looks like a stop sign). That should solve things!
~Lyssa

Mac Help window keeps crashing

When I go to Mac Help from Help on the Finder toolbar, all that happens is a blank window pops up that says "Untitled" as the window title and then disappears/crashes. How do I fix this?
The problem does not happen when I go to help for other applications such as Safari.
Thank you

Step 2. Create a new admin user account, log into it, and see if the problem persists. If not, your original account's hosed up; if so, it's system-wide. In the former case, report back and we'll pass along some steps to rectify (probably tomorrow, though); in the latter case, download and install the 10.5.6 COMBO update, repair permissions, and restart. That should do it. If not, consider doing an Archive & Install, saving user and network settings, installation—see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1545 for details.

Mac help window won't stay open

When I open Mac help, it closes again after 2 or 3 seconds. Any idea why? I have an iBook G4 with OS 10.3

If after trying the above, you could also get and try a free-running utility called OnyX,
as there is a previous version available from Titanium Software's OnyX downloads
page; and read through carefully on the options this utility offers. You may be able to
reset the Apple Help Viewer so it has to rebuild itself on startup. There are other tools
in this, which essentially is a user-interface over some deeper OS X system tools that
are already on-board the computer. Some of the tricks are short-cutted so you can do
them without going into the single-user mode or run the Mac in Console, etc.
And if the system is acting fairly odd and these suggestions do not appear to help, see
how much hard disk drive free-space is available on the computer's hard disk drive,
then consider doing an "archive & install" and then update to 10.3.9 and give the new
system the last and latest security updates, and latest java it can use, QuickTime, Safari,
and other latest more secure browsers; and repair disk permissions between updates.
By the time odd things start happening in Panther or Tiger, there could be something else
needing attention in the system; so maintenance & preventative maintenance is suggested.
Good luck & happy computing!

Mac OS X Tiger: Place a software window always on top

Hi,
Is there any way possible to place a software's window (TextEdit, Captain FTP...any software) on top of other softwares. It would be really useful in web programming.
Thanks.
Yv
iMac C2D 2.33, 1 GB, x1600 256mb, 250 GB HD Mac OS X (10.4.8) now enjoying full Apple reliability

That would usually be dependent on the individual application offering that feature.

"subroutine" priority and Window always on top

When I build my .vi into a .dll and call it from a C++ application, and run the C++ application in debugger mode, the user interface (window) of the C++ application always remains on top. I cannot switch to any windows below it (example: trying to switch to the C++ debugger in order to set a break point). This only occurs when calling my dll in the C++ app. Would a subvi that had priorities set to "subroutine" cause this? None of the other "Window Appearance" settings are set to a value that would cause this.
Thanks,
Daryl

Hello,
I am speculating here, but that does sound like the modal behavior of a LabVIEW front panel. Perhaps you can verify that none of the front panels for any of your subVIs used to create your dlls have the modal window appearance property set. Even if a front panel was set that way, I'm not sure how or why that behavior would transitively affect an application which simply uses the corresponding dll.
Best Regards,
JLS
Best,
JLS
Sixclear

Mac Help windows always on top

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