title: Running a Popup Notification from the background with Receiver or Service
body: <p>I am trying to implement a rather common question in SMS notification.</p>
  
  <p>I want to create a notification (which a custom view / text / etc) on the screen, but I want to cause <em>minimal</em> distraction to the user. I don't want to create an extra step of dragging down the notification bar and clicking it, which is what most stock messaging apps do anyways.</p>
  
  <p>My initial implementation was to bring up a AlertDialog through a receiver, which works as it should, but of course takes control away from the user, which is not what I ultimately wanted.</p>
  
  <p>My second implementation was to bring up a PopupWindow through an "invisible" activity. However, bringing up any Activity, as you probably know, takes focus of the current activity, so it will cause (at least) a 1 click distraction to the user, even if he can see what is still in the background.</p>
  
  <p>My third implementation was a custom Toast -- this works fine, except it is not clickable and its lifetime is not well controlled.</p>
  
  <p>So, knowing what I've implemented, I would like to ask if anyone knows or has a clue of how we would bring up a popup near the top without causing <em>any</em> distraction. I know several notification managers are able to do this. </p>
  
  <p>Here is an example with Pops Notification.
  <a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/849/screenshot2012081618583.png/" rel="nofollow">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/849/screenshot2012081618583.png/</a></p>