CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-chromegoogle-chrome-extension
Umair
Umair

Reputation: 11

How to stop chrome tab focus?

I am writing a chrome extension which refreshes pages after a certain time interval. I got it working fine, but a new problem occurred.. Whenever the page refreshes the tab gets highlighted (starts blinking) or else comes in focus. Ie it is getting focused on.

Now this works differently depending on the chrome browser state, but the core issue is the same: 1. If user switches tab to another one (suppose writing an email in gmail.com) while waiting for page to refresh itself, on refresh the current mail tab will get outfocused (so he wont be able to continue writing his email without clicking on the window first)

  1. If the user swithces to any other application on his workspace (like my computer, outlook etc), on refresh the chrome icon will start blinking on the taskbar (highly annoying)

  2. If the user has multiple chrome windows open with a tab each running the refresh code, then on refresh that window will get focus (come at top). This will repeat for all chrome windows whenever there specific refreshes occur.

Steps to reproduce the problem:

  1. Write a simple extension

  2. In the background page, create a new tab with:

    chrome.tabs.create({ url: "https://drive.google.com/", active: false})

  3. Now in a loop, after every minute, refresh this tab with:

    chrome.tabs.update(tab_id, {url: "https://drive.google.com/",
                            active: false,
                            highlighted: false});

  4. Once you start this code, either minimize the chrome window or shift your workspace and focus on something else.

  5. Every time tabs.update() gets called, the Chrome window either unminimizes from task bar, or gets the focus on it.

What i want is to remove this focus whenever the page refreshes. If anyone can please help me with this i would be very greatful.

Thanks, Umair

EDIT:

code for my background.js file

    chrome.webNavigation.onErrorOccurred.addListener(function (_errorDetails) {
    var myUrl = 'myPage.htm';
    chrome.tabs.update(_errorDetails.tabId, { url: myUrl, active: false, 
    highlighted: false, selected: false },
        function (_tabDetails) {
            chrome.windows.update(_tabDetails.windowId, { drawAttention: false });
        });
    });

Iv tried to make all related parameters false to stop focus.

Also on myPage.htm the function reload() is called on pageload.

    function reloadPage() {
    //code for 10 second delay

    location.reload();  
    }

myPage.htm is itself a simple page showing few lines of text like 'Unable to load page' etc.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3843

Answers (1)

Umair
Umair

Reputation: 11

I changed the code and got it working for me as per my requirements. What i did was instead of using the reload function to refresh page, i used the message passing technique of the chrome extension to send a message (containing url and tabID) from my js to background.js and update the relevant tab there with the url.

I know this is not a perfect solution, but it worked for me, therefore im sharing it.

Upvotes: 1

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