Highlighting modal dialogs

[jcox23]

Hello,
What I observe frequently from users using my application is that they miss very often the presence of modal dialog (the common setup is 2x30inches screen)...and wonder why the application stopped working.
So I was wondering if there is a way to highlight the modal window by darkening at least the rest of the application for example (a bit like in Windows 7 for security pop-ups)?

Thanks.

[anda_skoa]

This kind of highlighting is usually done by the window system in order to have it consistent between applications.
As you arlready said Windows 7 does it by fading the parent window out, Linux desktops have similar effects, no idea about OS X.

If you are on a system that isn't capable of doing that, you could change the style sheet on the window that opened the dialog or create a widget that is on top of the window's content and semi transparent, etc.

A different approach might be to move the dialog to a position close to the mouse cursor, etc

Cheers,
_