Stealing keyboard focus without activating

FROM : Ingvar Nedrebo
DATE : Sat Jul 08 16:39:13 2006

I need to get keyboard focus without my app becoming active.

Here's why: I've got this third-party media app that shows content in 
fullscreen. My app is meant to be an alternate front-end to that app, 
offering (in my view) better controls for play/pause/ff, that kind of 
thing.

So my app puts up a control panel in front of the media apps content 
window (using a hotkey). When my panel is up, I want it to have 
keyboard focus. I tried doing this by forcing my app active, using 
this technique from Daniel Jalkut:

<http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/cocoa/2005/11/5/149489>

However, forcing my app active causes the media up to come out of 
fullscreen mode. That makes some sense, I guess, but doesn't help me. 
I've made my app a background app (LSUIElement) with a menu in a 
status item (NSStatusItem).

Quicksilver does exactly what I want. When the media app is in 
fullscreen, I bring up Quicksilver's panel, type away and dismiss it 
without disturbing the media app at all. Does anybody know how 
Quicksilver (and similar apps) does this?

Regards,
i.