One of the most annoying things about operating systems, especially Windows, is it’s insistence on popping things up at the front of the display screen irrespective of what you might be doing.

If you are running a number of applications, say a word processor, email application, Twitter client, couple of browser sessions, and one or two other applications you may find notifications pop up regularly and often take the mouse and keyboard focus which can cause havoc if you are mid-stream into typing your magnum opus.

Installing applications is another example where you can easily select the default setting of Next, or Cancel when you least expect it. As some applications take a lifetime to install it is usual to put them into the background, and let them get on with it, however the moment they need user input they pop up and try and take over your current view. If you don’t happen to be looking at the screen whilst your are typing, at that particular moment, the results can be quite unexpected.

A sensible solution might be to adopt a scrolling informational status bar, or other dedicated area on screen where notifications and pop-ups can call home – so they don’t interfere with whatever you have as current focus.

It’s only a suggestion of course – but if it makes it into the next version of Windows at least I’ll be able to say “Windows 8 was my idea”.