This is a common disease that all Blender users who spend a lot of time with Blender suffer, up to an intolerable degree, because some OS developer guys simply can’t even figure out the obvious.
The symptoms are that when you leave Blender, you still have the desire to control the window or panel which is under the mouse, by clicking or using the wheel -without having to click and bring it on ‘focus’ first.
I had it myself too for years, and I was thinking to make a mouse utility, but I did a search first and I found that a good one already exists! In case you haven’t discover it yet, here it is:
It’s called WizMouse -no trojans, adware or spyware -free to download. Note that it works in reverse -it doesn’t heal you, it heals Windows! Happy recovery 
This is really useful! Thanks! I was a little sceptical that it was a legitimate download, but you’ve enough posts here to justify it
You’re welcome. Note that it doesn’t change Windows permanently, it only improves usability while it runs and you can disable or enable it with a single-click on its taskbar icon! I’m using it a few days now and I thought I should mention it here.
Heh, I run Linux, and use a peculiar window manager that does this for me.
Another thing:
Ever since I discovered virtual desktops (which can be done in windows using virtuawin), I cannot understand how people can put up with a single monitor and only one desktop. Try using a program like virtua-win, put your browser on one ‘desktop’ blender on another, and your music player on a third. No need to have them all overlapping…
Just out of curiosity, what do you actually gain from this if you are only running one program on each desktop (as opposed to just minimizing the programs you are not using or maximizing the ones that you are)?
don’t need any addons in win 7
just goto ease of access ~ make the mouse easier to use and tick
activate a window by hovering over it
have fun
omg thanks so much!!
that helps a lot especially while looking a tutorial on one screen and editing in blender on the other screen!
Great find heddheld, I’ve never visited “Ease of access” before! :eek:
I was going to remove WizMouse but compared to the ‘Ease of Access’, it behaves in a less intrusive way, with more options.
For example, with ‘Ease of Access’, hovering the mouse will always bring the underlying window in front.
This most of the time is not desirable if you just want to scroll the window, especially a partially covered window. WizMouse will bring it in front only if you enable this option in its menu.
It also has an option to enable mouse wheel, for applications without mouse wheel support.
The example I gave was pretty bad.
So here’s another few examples:
In university, we use a program called Matlab. It’s pretty complex, and I can’t remember many of the commands. Thus I need to be able to access google (or the program help, or whatever) really quickly.
So on one screen, I have the open matlab file (pretty much a text editor) as well as the matlab console.
On another screen I have the internet browser and the same matlab file.
Not much advantage over normal switching, as only a single window changes between desktops.
I develop games in blender, and I need upwards of 4 things:
- Blender window
- Blender console
- Text/script editor (often a couple of scripts)
- API reference
Often I will have multiple blender instances as sometimes linked files will need to be edited if the script is attached to an object in one, but the effect of the script can only be seen in another.
Traditionally, I’d have all of these on one desktop, overlapping, and, in windows 7, all the blender windows would be clumped into the same place.
With virtual-win (or equivalent), I can set up:
Desktop 1) Main game blend in blender with console down the bottom
Desktop 2) console down the bottom with the script and API reference next to each other up the top
Desktop 3) Any other blender instances
If you consistently do this, and use a keyboard shortcut (ie alt+1, alt+2, alt+3), you can greatly reduce, if not remove, the time you waste playing with the layout of windows.
Most people I show it to want to try it, and after they’ve tried it, most people like it, and get annoyed when using a computer without it. It’s just a workflow that is very easy to adapt to, and rather useful. There’s no real advantage other than making things slightly faster, and the layout of windows cleaner/easier to find what you are looking for.
right now, my setup looks like this, i am using i3:
desktop 1: a terminal running tmux. i run EVERYTHING from here, no exceptions
desktop 2: blender and my image viewer (gpicview), set to tabbed layout
desktop 3: GIMP
desktop 4: firefox and keepassx (BA keeps logging me out)
switching them is easy, because there’s some keyboard shortcuts to do it, so while i am blendering, i can jump back to gpicview without worrying about all the other crap i’ve set up
its a lot easier!