Periodic active window deselection in mountain lion

Question

When working in a window of an app, the window randomly, but regularly deselects and title bar grays out.  If I'm typing something at the time I get a warning sound with each keystroke.  I have to mouse click back in the window to reactivate it.  How do I stop this annoying behavior?

Answer 1

Hi John,
Since we started with OS X each release has cool new features and new little annoyances or things that don't work. Plus these days everyone is an "expert", so we get no real help from Apple and tons of bad info - maybe especially on this, the Apple "support" site.
Sorry I assumed you recognized Applescript. Here's how to do it:
First, make sure the Finder window you want to work with is open and set up close to what you want (ie. sidebar hidden, view as list, sort by name, etc.)
Then open the AppleScript Editor app (which should be in the Utilities folder) and choose "New" from the File menu.
Paste in:
     tell application "Finder
          get bounds of window "Applications"
     end tell
Then click the "Run" button at the top of the window. It will return something like:{1604, 44, 1864, 1165}, which are the rectangular coordinates of the window "Applications". The numbers represent left side, top, right side, and bottom.
That first script is just to get the start point for finding the rectangle you want to end up with.
Open another New script window from the File menu and paste in:
                tell application "Finder"
                              set bounds of window "Applications" to {1604, 44, 1864, 1165} -- or whatever rectangle you want
               end tell
When you click "Run" it will set the Applications window to the rect specified. Just play with the numbers to get the exact size and location you want.
I haven't tried rebooting yet, but you can save the script to run anytime, even add it to your startup items to make it run at boot time if necessary.
Cheers...