R – What causes a window to not appear in the taskbar until it’s Alt-Tabbed to in Vista

First of all, thanks for answers! 9 total answers. Thank you.

Bad news: all of the answers had some quirks or didn't work quite right (or at all). I've added a comment to each of your posts.

Good news: I've found a way to make it work. This solution is pretty straightforward and seems to work in all the scenarios (mousing down, selecting text, tabbing focus, etc.)

bool alreadyFocused;

...

textBox1.GotFocus += textBox1_GotFocus;
textBox1.MouseUp += textBox1_MouseUp;
textBox1.Leave += textBox1_Leave;

...

void textBox1_Leave(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    alreadyFocused = false;
}


void textBox1_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Select all text only if the mouse isn't down.
    // This makes tabbing to the textbox give focus.
    if (MouseButtons == MouseButtons.None)
    {
        this.textBox1.SelectAll();
        alreadyFocused = true;
    }
}

void textBox1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    // Web browsers like Google Chrome select the text on mouse up.
    // They only do it if the textbox isn't already focused,
    // and if the user hasn't selected all text.
    if (!alreadyFocused && this.textBox1.SelectionLength == 0)
    {
        alreadyFocused = true;
        this.textBox1.SelectAll();
    }
}

As far as I can tell, this causes a textbox to behave exactly like a web browser's address bar.

Hopefully this helps the next guy who tries to solve this deceptively simple problem.

Thanks again, guys, for all your answers that helped lead me towards the correct path.

i don't work in vista but it might be better just to flash the taskbar or do a ballon popup or something like that. What your suggesting maybe a bit annoying to a user. Say there typing away and there looking at the keyboard and your window has stolen the focus they look back and find what they just wrote hasn't gone into the app they thought it was going into.like this.

flashing the task bar

this might help also