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Change the Way Windows Are Focused

Jun 18, 2009  By Mitch Frazier
 in
FAIL (the browser should render some flash content, not this).

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:p

Sander's picture
Submitted by Sander (not verified) on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 02:10.

Been using this from the day I started using Linux, seriously didn't you guys sniff through most of the menus when you came into this wondrous world? ;) I find the clickfocus of windows a major pain in the ass.

Windoze

Mitch Frazier's picture
Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 09:14.

For Windows converts the concept is probably so foreign that many might not have recognized the meaning of the option even if they had seen it. Not sure if the Mac offers those capabilities or not, probably not given how strictly they control their interface.

I remember this from my Unix days, although I never really liked the feature. I'd almost completely forgotten about it till another Unix buddy of mine was ranting about how annoying it was that Windows didn't have such a feature, which is what prompted the post.

Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

Wow, radical!

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 15:57.

That's like... Cool and unexpected! Particularly given that most Unix window managers have supported this behaviour since, oh, two decades?

True

Mitch Frazier's picture
Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 16:06.

And it's been about a decade and a half since any of those window managers (ones that had this as the default setting) were in widespread use so not everybody knows about the capability.

Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

KDE 4, too?

Paul Adasiak's picture
Submitted by Paul Adasiak (not verified) on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 11:38.

Nice trick. Thank you.

It looked like you were using KDE 3.x. Does it also work in KDE 4.x?

Yes

Mitch Frazier's picture
Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 17:56.

Look for "Window Behavior" in the desktop settings.

Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

Very neat, I wasn't aware

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 14:57.

Very neat, I wasn't aware that you could change focus to a window without bringing it to the foreground.
Would definitely need some getting used to, but I think it's worth it.
Thanks Mitch!

For those of us using gnome...

Oz's picture
Submitted by Oz (not verified) on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 14:08.

Go to system->preferences->windows and check the box that says "Select windows when the mouse moves over them".

Not sure how to change the click to raise setting though.