If you have specific references for best-practices cases with window placement and appearance,
I'll happily review them.

As it stands, Media Center Master is using the 'DefaultPlacement' property for pop-up
windows placement and 'Form.Show()' to show some windows and 'Form.ShowDialog()' for
model windows that don't allow interaction with the rest of MCM while open.  These
are all stock .NET methods from stock objects in the framework.  From your report,
it sounds like you're under the impression that MCM employs workarounds to get around
Windows usability improvements, but I can assure you that no such measures are taken.

I can't find any references, right now, that site best practices, but would you not
agree that stealing focus is bad?

I don't know about .NET, but in C++ you need to circumvent the default system behavior
that prevents focus stealing.

Regardless of the coding technology, the application should behave "cooperatively",
and not "aggressively".

Here are some references discussing stealing focus:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/08/01/8795860.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stealing#Microsoft_Windows
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_prevent_applications_fr.htm
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/34993615/window-zorder.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632599(VS.85).aspx#foreground

I don't necessarily disagree on how an application *should* preform -- I'm responding
first to the implication that it's intentional or that MCM goes out of its way to do
so.

However, that said -- it seems that you have to go out of your way to *not* do it in
C#:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/156046/show-a-form-without-stealing-focus-in-c

Incidentally, I did add the override code to prevent forms that pop-up from stealing
focus.  I made a blanket change to all of these types of forms, but have not tested
every condition that they occur in (I use a lot of 'please wait' type conditions).
 Of the tests I performed, the focus was not stolen in any case.

Fixed and waiting for next release.

Thank you.

Released in version 1.29.2711.620.