Filed under: Utilities, Windows
Katmouse Improves Window Scrolling Behaviour
by Jason Clarke Jul 14th 2005 at 4:23AM
This utility could solve a simple problem that you may not even know that you have. KatMouse is a simple utility that sits in your system tray, using next to no resources. All it does is to allow you to scroll the window that is directly under the cursor, whether or not you have clicked in that window. In other words, the focus does not need to be in the window you are scrolling. Personally, I find this to be a wonderful utility, as it allows me to read one document and move about within it, while keeping my cursor in another document where I can make notes or write. KatMouse is free.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Drewsky said 11:06AM on 7-14-2005
Isn't this pretty much the same as the Windows XMouse powertoy? As I recall that makes whatever window your mouse is over active, like in an Xwindow session in Unix. Anyone have comments?
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Myria said 11:31AM on 7-14-2005
Do you mean the Xmouse option in TweakUI? If so, not exactly. That gives focus to whatever window you hover over. If I understand things correctly, this allows you to use the scroll-wheel on a non-active window without changing focus. Both seem like they'd be of limited utility at absolute best, but they are slightly different.
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Jason Clarke said 12:38AM on 7-15-2005
You're correct, Myria. You're also correct that the functionality in this utility is limited pretty much to just that feature. In my opinion, it's enough of a user interface improvement that it's worth the install; Microsoft should consider making this default behavior. Until you use it, you may not see the benefit of not having to change the window in focus to scroll the contents.
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David Ron said 7:20PM on 7-14-2005
My computer already scrolls the window under the mouse. Oh wait, I'm using KDE (Linux). That's a built in feature.
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Samuel said 9:25PM on 7-14-2005
yo, this is a brilliant tool. Thanks Jason
Samuel
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