It's not too difficult. a) only the application with keyboard focus gets to open new windows with keyboard focus less than about two seconds after a keystroke (with no intervening mouse activity). b) no keyboard input into a new window for the first second, unless the user clicks there.

We looked into this while I was Trolltech. Decided against doing it for Qt unilaterally, it's really something the system must do, or else it's too annoying.

But what about pop ups that come from within the application? Anything that has dialogues come up when there is a chance the user might be using enter/return for a different purpose is a bit crap, especially with multi-screen systems where there is a fair chance the user is looking elsewhere. Even just having no pre-selected default would help (so arrow - enter/return would be needed).

Is this an example of what you have in mind: The user is typing at Microsoft Word, and it's not a keyboard shortcut to open the "document properties" window, and Microsoft Word chooses to open another window during the typing and divert keyboard focus there?

I think so, yes. Diverting keyboard focus in the middle of anything should never happen. Should there any exception to this?

This seems like something that should be handled by the application's developer. A different application's popup or focus steal should be managed by the window manager / OS.

My favourite was watching someone perform an MRI with injected contrast - imaging being timed for specific points after injection.

They are just tidying up parameters for a bit of post constrast injection imaging. They hit enter to accept a parameter change just as a notification appeared to trigger the next scan. Basically it missed the key imaging phase and the scan had to be repeated a day later once the injected contrast had been cleared out of the patient’s system. Imaging equipment vendors seem to make custom UI in places where it is unneeded (software buttons which trigger on touch down, not touch up for critical functionality?! Why?) but in places where it would be safer to make something custom they don’t.