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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

KatMouse: Scroll anywhere

KatMouseKatMouse is a useful little application for Windows that makes your mouse's scroll wheel even more useful. It changes the behavior of the scroll wheel to let you scroll any window on the screen, not just the active one. So if you're, for example, entering text in one window while reading from another, you can scroll down in the latter without changing the focus away from where you're entering text. KatMouse also has useful feature for task-switching that lets you use wheel-clicks (I've met a surprising number of people who don't realize the mouse wheel is also a button) to "push down" the current window, i.e. clicking on the current window with the mouse wheel will make whatever window is below it pop to the top. However, this function takes over the wheel-click functionality entirely, which will annoy you if you're used to using it for other things, like opening and closing tabs in Firefox. Fortunately, this function can be turned off. You can also specify a list of applications that won't be affected at all by KatMouse. KatMouse is among those great applications that are completely invisible (well, except for an icon in the system tray) but make your life easier, and it's free, too. Update: Fellow Download Squadder Jason Clarke informs me that we've covered KatMouse before. OMG dupe! Oops.

[Thanks, Roxy!]

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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