How to prevent JFrame from coming to top after closing JOptionPane?

Question

I am automating certain actions on a web browser. Upon completing a number of actions, a JOptionPane would pop up to ask the user if they would like to continue.

After I clicked 'Yes', my main frame would pop up over my web browser, which ruins my workflow.

I could get the browser to move to the front of the main frame, but I would like to know if it is possible to prevent the main frame from popping up after selecting an option in the JOptionPane dialog?

Answer 1

I couldn't find any options on JOptionPane so I started looking into how easy it would be to reimplement it using another JFrame. I decided to disable the main frame and enable it back later (it seems that this is what JOptionPane does internally anyway) and before I reimplemented JOptionPane I have noticed that it solves the problem:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    final JFrame frame = new JFrame();

    JButton button = new JButton("hello");
    button.addActionListener(e -> {
        frame.setEnabled(false); // disable main frame
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(frame, "hello");
        frame.setEnabled(true); // enable main frame
    });
    frame.setContentPane(button);

    frame.setVisible(true);
    frame.setSize(600, 480);
    frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
}

However I am not sure if this will work on all platforms. Does it help you?

If not, I would recommend replacing JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(frame, "hello"); with your own JFrame so you have full control over it. You will have to add WindowListener to enable main frame when it's closed. However you will loose a blocking functionality - this may be more difficult to implement than it's worth it.