#FF00AA

The Problems With Click-Through, redux. Have you ever thought about the fact that so many Windows users display their windows full-screen (which irritates me every time I see it on a screencam, and it’s a good thing I don’t spend my time in cybercafés, or I’d blow a fuse) only because of click-through (i.e. the fact that, when you click an inactive window, you might activate a button, trigger a command, make changes, when all you wanted to do was bring the window to the foreground)? And an idea comes to me. I don’t feel like diving back into Visual C++ right now, so I’ll just offer it to the public in hope that it’ll become something: someone should make a little freeware program to prevent click-through, intercepting any click on an inactive window, and activating the window without transmitting the click to one of its buttons. As for the technical aspects, I see two possibilities: either setting a hook on mouse movements and test where each click lands, but it might slow down such stuff as drawing programs, or adding a transparent window that would stay permanently right behind the active window, and get the clicks naturally. All that’s left to do then is adding an ignore-list, in order not to prevent click-through on certain windows, determined by title or by executable name (for Winamp or the ICQ contact-list, for instance). It’s so simple, I could almost ge to it myself. So, who’ll be doing it?

P.S. Pinged Lazyweb. Hey, you never know. Except that I’m not sure my idea is explained clearly enough.