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Submission details

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Missing mouse focus for scrolling

Submitted by tino on June 5, 2008 to Annoyance, Bug, Usability

When you open a new window, the focus of the mouse should be in scroll areas to use the mouse wheel. While also previous versions of the OS have never changed the focus automatically when hovering over another window, it has put the mouse focus in new windows that pop up. This functionality is missed in a lot of dialogs in Vista like the Folder view properties: There it is not possible to scroll with the mouse wheel without selecting a check box.

New windows opened by the user should always get the focus.

or: Automatically change the focus to that window under the mouse pointer.

Low

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (10 comments)

wasker wrote on June 5, 2008, 2:31am

Better to drop the requirement of having focus on the control to be able to scroll it. I'm using KatMouse to overcome such a limitation.

cosmin2007 wrote on June 7, 2008, 8:04pm

good point, but there should be a choice somewhere, as not everyone is using KatMice

thenonhacker wrote on June 8, 2008, 1:24am

+1 DUDE! It bothers me to use the Mouse Wheel over scrollable lists but then, I have to click first for scrolling to work.

It should apply even to apps like browsers. When this is implemented, things will be more useful, more predictable.

tino wrote on June 8, 2008, 7:14pm

Changed problem description.
Changed solution description.

bwilson wrote on June 13, 2008, 1:51am

@everyone who posted here: check out this similar bug: http://www.aerotaskforce.com/view/106#comment

@tino--just noticed your comment on my very similar suggestion. Thanks for finding it. Yours is much more detailed. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more votes. As long as this problem gets fixed I really don't care who wins the vote total.

Do you know if Long merges the votes if he declares one post a duplicate of another?

tino wrote on June 13, 2008, 3:44am

@bwilson: I don't know. But it could be. I also don't care about the exact votes.

longzheng wrote on June 13, 2008, 6:58am

@bwilson: I don't merge the votes because there are complications with that. ;)

bwilson wrote on June 14, 2008, 12:32am

@tino: they got merged and hopefully Windows 7 will have background scrolling, so everything is cool.

@longzheng: I totally understand, the web is full of complications. Thanks for merging them.

blueskynis wrote on August 19, 2008, 1:29pm

In Linux you can scroll when hovering over a list. No need to click or make a window the active one.

MageOfHyrule wrote on November 11, 2008, 1:16am

+1
Whichever control your mouse is hovering over should receive the scroll-wheel messages.

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