Scroll in Windows Without the Cursor Focus
One of the features of Mac OS X I use daily is the window scrolling even when the window doesn’t have the focus. It’s super handy when dealing with multiple apps. I don’t click an app to gain the focus, I just move the cursor over any window and start scrolling. Wouldn’t it be nice if Windows could do the same thing?
What’s that? It can?!? Son of gun, the Business Hacks folks apparently found the answer in a bit of freeware. WizMouse sends scrolling and mouse wheel commands to the window under the mouse pointer, whether that window has the focus or not. This 649KB download officially supports Windows 2000, XP and Vista. I’ll tell you a little secret though: I tested it and found that it works well in Windows 7 too. No need to tap on a window to gain focus before scrolling now!
Awesome! This has always been a pet peeve for me.
What is even more annoying is when scrolling does not work, even when the window does have the focus. For example, in the standard File Save dialog box, scrolling (with the scroll wheel) with the mouse over the file list sometimes will not work, instead scrolling the folder list even though I specifically placed my mouse cursor over the file list! It is extremely annoying to have to click some other file in the file list before being able to scroll the list to find the file I’m looking for.
I think it’d be a nice option to have, but personally I just Alt/Win-Tab my way over to an app and use my touchpad’s scrolling edges more often than not.
synaptics drivers have always done this
This is a very useful feature.
It is available in tweakUI:
Mouse>X-Mouse>Activation follows mouse
tweakUI is part of powertoys,
available for XP at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
@gordon This is a bit different – activating windows following the mouse is different than scrolling non-active windows. This software utility redirects the SCROLL messages to the window under the mouse and does not activate the window’s application window.
@Rick – thx, I do prefer wizmouse.
when moving to the EEE’s multitouch trackpad this was 1 of the features i missed about synaptic trackpads.
but i still love the EEE’s multitouch trackpad. by the way, this program doesnt work for it. it must have something to do with the Elantech multitouch, or maybe some obscure setting.
There’s another great little app which does this called KatMouse. It’s been around for ages. See http://ehiti.de/katmouse/
I’ve been using it for many years…it’s the first thing I install whenever I get a new computer.
Also wheeler:
http://www.eluent.com/wheeler.htm
The same option working on Outlook Express too
Which version of Mac osx do you use? I can’t find this setting in 10.4.11…
I was on 10.5.x when I wrote that post earlier this year.
Kevin, thanks for your reply!
I managed to find a 10.5 machine, but I couldn’t find the setting. Could you tell me where it might be found on 10.5?