BasicService.showDocument(url) loses application focus to browser

Hi

I'm using Webstart to run a swing client application that displays a listbox of headings (urls) . The use case is that a user should be able to select a headline in the listbox and see the corresponding webpage displayed in the browser.

This works fine on XP/Vista/2000 with IE5/6/7 and Firefox 2.0.

However there is a problem, once the first webpage is displayed the browser becomes the foremost application, and the user has to use the mouse to restore focus to the swing app. This is annoying as the main use case is for the user to be able to scroll through stories using the cursor keys, while seeing the stories update in the browser.

I've tried varients of:

BasicService bs = (BasicService)ServiceManager.lookup("javax.jnlp.BasicService");

bs.showDocument(url);

this.toFront();

and

SwingUtilities.invokeLater(this.toFront()); //simplified, it built a thread to invoke

but to no avail.

Can anyone advise how to restore control to the swing app and just have the browser act as a "slave"?

Regards

Dan

[1097 byte] By [danhanleya] at [2007-11-27 4:42:32]