"focus" follows mouse -- possible with Vista??

some of the new tricks (displaying the open windows in a three-d "deck") are
neat -- but one thing I like is to have the "focus" of the window simply
follow the mouse, such that simply touching a window brings it to the
forefront for input, not requiring a click

I think this was a PowerToy in some versions of Windows and actually part of
the program in other versions (under Mouse setup) -- virtually certain that
no Registry "hack" was needed

Is this available as part of the standard Vista RC1 installation, and I just
haven't found the right place to click a check box. Or is this part of
PowerToys? And, if the latter, do XP PowerToys work under Vista? (even if MS
isn't supporting them and won't CLAIM compatibility)?

Time to hack the registry.

Go to:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
For full X-Mouse, add +41h to the first number stored in binary key
"UserPreferencesMask".
If you only want "focus follows mouse," add +1h.

For example, the value for my key was "9E 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00"
I edited it to "9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00" to get "focus follows mouse"
If I had wanted full X-Mouse, I'd have edited it to "D9 3E 07 80 12 00
00 00"

After that is done, edit the 32bit dword key "ActiveWndTrkTimeout" to
the number of milliseconds (in decimal) that you want it to wait before
it changes the focus. If this key does not exist, you can create one.
With the key set to zero or no key at all, it will automatically change
the focus as soon as your cursor touches a new window.

Hope this helps.
-ltwally

ps. If you add these changes to the .DEFAULT account in [HKEY_USERS],
they will be present for all newly created accounts. This is handy for
domain controllers and such.


--
ltwally