Comments on: Sloppy Focus in Windows

By: Puyan Lotfi

Puyan Lotfi — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:02:01 +0000

This is almost awesome. Like the previous poster said, this is FocusFollowsMouse. Also I found that in windows 7 this breaks the Windows Key-Arrow shortcuts for Aero Snap: the focus after a aero snap will be whatever window/desktop the cursor is over and not whatever window you are in the process of trying to move.

By: James Pearce

James Pearce — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:26:22 +0000

This is also a feature of TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) released by MS for WinXP. Mouse -> X-Mouse -> Activation Follows Mouse achieves this. It also has a setting for auto-raising the window, which is the feature your are missing with the reg tweak

By: kzslim

kzslim — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:40:17 +0000

Great. It works on Windows7.

By: Wicher Minnaard

Wicher Minnaard — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:58:11 +0000

@Tomas: Well, according to Wikipedia and this informative page, this is sloppy focus. If you move out of some window and over to your desktop background, you don't lose input focus of said window. But it does not allow you to scroll in an inactive window, which is a killer feature indeed. I've just finished a blogpost on this subject and some other things in which X11 (and its window managers) positively stack up against Windows and OS X.

By: SmÃ¶rgÃ¥sbord » Windows/Mac focus models and copy-pasting: Doing it wrong, both of you

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:48:01 +0000

[...] Windows 95 and it appears it still works. You can have crude ’sloppy focus’ on Windows. Just hex-edit your UserPreferencesMask in the Registry (Half of the times that I’m doing anything remotely interesting on Windows, I [...]

By: Tomas

Tomas — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:34:47 +0000

Well this worked, kinda!
Now focus follows the mouse, but it doesn't make the windows to jump out in front.. Meaning i have to hover the mouse over a program to be able to write in it..

Meaning, this is not sloppy focus, it is FocusFollowsMouse..

Not like the linux sloppy focus where i can scroll in a window that is not active, and still keep focus on a window so i can type there!

Too bad

By: Scurvy Jake

Scurvy Jake — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:09:09 +0000

It goes under the Current User section, so it won't apply to anyone else, just the user that makes the change.

By: george

george — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:01:12 +0000

is this able to only be under one user or the whole system. other users probably would freak out. i haven't used the regestery enough to know these things.

By: Scurvy Jake

Scurvy Jake — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:41:56 +0000

Thanks for clarifying the bit issue. And the java, well, I got sick of comment spam. Would you prefer an unreadable CAPTCHA instead? I wouldn't. Plus the time it takes to generate the hash means the commenter needs to take a little time to read through what they're writing.

By: Sam Hocevar

Sam Hocevar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:27:03 +0000

Your explanation is misleading: the bit needs to be set, not incremented. You must not affect any other bits of the mask while setting the sloppy focus bit.

As a sidenote, forcing me to install a Java plugin just so I can leave a comment on this blog makes me want to torture small animals.