Windows annoyances from a mac user

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geocom

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#207957 20-Jan-2017 21:35

So i recently ditched my 2012 mac laptop after along time being a mac user for a Acer predator(This is not a post about this take a look at my user account for the mac laptop posts to find out why).

So i have had this laptop for a few months now and there are a few things that are driving me nuts with windows. Maybe someone here will know a fix workaround or otherwise.

Quite often i will have 2 chrome windows next to each other. One will be playing a video and the other one will be browsing the web. Then an email comes in or i do something in another application i click on the video's window and oh now its decided that because i clicked on the video i wanted to pause the video. Why, Why does it register the click instead of just bringing the window forward.
Scrolling of inactive windows is one of the better features in the mac and its so good to finally have it in windows except for one thing why does it need to make the window active in the process. This gets really annoying when my second finger just happens to scrape the touchpad while moving the mouse around the screen and it takes the focus away from the current window to the one that has like 32 pixels visible in the background and makes it active.

So any ideas I love this laptop but am quickly remembering why i left the windows ecosystem all those years ago.

Geoff E

Behodar

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#1706675 20-Jan-2017 21:57

Scrolling of inactive windows is one of the better features in the mac and its so good to finally have it in windows except for one thing why does it need to make the window active in the process.

There was a third-party app for this in Windows 7, and while it worked the "Mac way" for some apps, other apps would start flashing their taskbar icon as soon as you scrolled. At a guess I'd say that there's some underlying issue in the way the Windows scrolling system works with certain types of apps. While I haven't used "scroll follows mouse" in newer versions of Windows, I suspect that Microsoft wanted all apps to be consistent and therefore forced the scrolled app to come to the front.

Why, Why does it register the click instead of just bringing the window forward.

Apple is actually guilty of this one too. Clicking Mail or Safari will only give focus to the window, but with Messages or Calculator the click will "flow through". Consistency would be nice...

hio77

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#1706689 20-Jan-2017 22:26

Both of your issues i do not get.

sounds possibly like touchpad issues more than windows issues tbh.

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geocom

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#1706765 20-Jan-2017 23:31

Behodar:

There was a third-party app for this in Windows 7, and while it worked the "Mac way" for some apps, other apps would start flashing their taskbar icon as soon as you scrolled. At a guess I'd say that there's some underlying issue in the way the Windows scrolling system works with certain types of apps. While I haven't used "scroll follows mouse" in newer versions of Windows, I suspect that Microsoft wanted all apps to be consistent and therefore forced the scrolled app to come to the front.

It is inconsistent with windows 10 chrome will not do it but the desktop will along with windows explorer where as microsoft designed metro apps won't

Apple is actually guilty of this one too. Clicking Mail or Safari will only give focus to the window, but with Messages or Calculator the click will "flow through". Consistency would be nice...

Never actually seen that my self.

hio77:

Both of your issues i do not get.

sounds possibly like touchpad issues more than windows issues tbh.

Scroll issue goes away with a external mouse but the click on an inactive window one still exists.

The trackpad in this computer is a synaptics one that works with microsoft's built in trackpad settings.

A Video may help.

Geoff E

lNomNoml

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#1706775 21-Jan-2017 00:13

Go into the Control Panel > Mouse > Synaptics > disable all the gesture and "features" that it comes with" see if that solves your issue, otherwise it looks like some kind of added program that may have come with your laptop that is doing that (maybe a acer program), that is not normal Windows 10 behaviour.

geocom

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#1706780 21-Jan-2017 00:28

Tried that before but there is no synaptics option in the mouse control panel.

There is an advanced/basic touchpad option in the bios but from my understanding the advanced option would work with windows 10 built in mouse gestures where as basic would give you synaptics drivers giving even worse gesture support. But will try switching it to basic in the morning and see what happens.

Geoff E

lxsw20

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#1706790 21-Jan-2017 02:47

TBH I've never found a laptop that have touchpads as good as the Mac ones. It is certainly one of their strong points.

geocom

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#1706844 21-Jan-2017 10:22

So changing it to basic stops windows from giving any trackpad options and just turns it into a ps/2 mouse so it looks more and more like an issue with windows precision trackpad support.

Its almost like it thinks it is a touch screen when scrolling and using pinch to zoom even when these are turned off and doing the same motions it brings the window forward.

lxsw20:

TBH I've never found a laptop that have touchpads as good as the Mac ones. It is certainly one of their strong points.

Agreed just cannot justify paying 5k for a underpowered and weak laptop offering as much as i love the os its just not worth it anymore.

Geoff E

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TwoSeven

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#1706866 21-Jan-2017 11:43

geocom:
So i recently ditched my 2012 mac laptop after along time being a mac user for a Acer predator(This is not a post about this take a look at my user account for the mac laptop posts to find out why).

So i have had this laptop for a few months now and there are a few things that are driving me nuts with windows. Maybe someone here will know a fix workaround or otherwise.

Quite often i will have 2 chrome windows next to each other. One will be playing a video and the other one will be browsing the web. Then an email comes in or i do something in another application i click on the video's window and oh now its decided that because i clicked on the video i wanted to pause the video. Why, Why does it register the click instead of just bringing the window forward.

I seem to remember these discussions back in the days whe bento (later ole/opendoc) was being deveoped. The dicussion was around whether the technology should work "outside in" or "inside out".

Typically when one clicks on a window at any location it is making that window active and input will usually pass to the control under the focus of the cursor; which in this case is a video that has the default behaviour of toggling pause/play when receiving a mouse click event. In windows, the default landing zone for setting the active focus or for moving a window is its title bar.

Scrolling of inactive windows is one of the better features in the mac and its so good to finally have it in windows except for one thing why does it need to make the window active in the process. This gets really annoying when my second finger just happens to scrape the touchpad while moving the mouse around the screen and it takes the focus away from the current window to the one that has like 32 pixels visible in the background and makes it active.

So any ideas I love this laptop but am quickly remembering why i left the windows ecosystem all those years ago.

As a personal opinion, scrolling an inactive window isn't really the best of ideas, because it is changing the view of data that is not likely to be currently in the users attention frame. It can lead to what is a negative affordance (potentially cognitive dissonance) in that when the individuals focus returns to the inactive window, they find it has changed and is now different from what they expected.

In windows there is a difference between focus and active. Focus is usually where ones attention is - focus typically follows the mouse - so you may see hover menus trigger in the displayed portion of a window. An active window is one that receives input, in older versions of windows the visual indicator of an active window was that it was the foremost one and often the titlebar would be highlighted.

The x-windows feature of changing the active window by moving the mouse over it can be found in the 'ease of use' settings and is called 'activate window by hovering mouse over it'. I think it is usually off by default.

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nathan

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#1708076 23-Jan-2017 14:04

lxsw20:

TBH I've never found a laptop that have touchpads as good as the Mac ones. It is certainly one of their strong points.

checkout a Surface Book some time :)

richms

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#1708083 23-Jan-2017 14:10

I scroll inactive windows all the time when I am typing into one and reading off others. Clicking out to the other one to give focus would mean I would have to either remember where I was typing to click back or alt-tab back in or mess about clicking it in the taskbar to give it focus without clickign it.

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lxsw20

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#1708095 23-Jan-2017 14:22

nathan:

lxsw20:

TBH I've never found a laptop that have touchpads as good as the Mac ones. It is certainly one of their strong points.

checkout a Surface Book some time :)

Got some at work. Still prefer the mac one.

geocom

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#1708100 23-Jan-2017 14:24

nathan:

lxsw20:

TBH I've never found a laptop that have touchpads as good as the Mac ones. It is certainly one of their strong points.

checkout a Surface Book some time :)

My understanding was that precision trackpad support was handled entirely by windows. If so the issue with scrolling bringing the window forward would be a bug in windows.

Anytime I have reported something or I google an issue I have found that someone has already reported it to Microsoft the response is usually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Geoff E

trig42

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#1708114 23-Jan-2017 14:37

I'm not really sure what your issue is?

I am on a laptop (Dell XPS13) running Win10. Using either an external mouse, or the trackpad, I can scroll inactive windows no problem (using trackpad, it is two fingers up or down on pad). Changing focus to a windows with a video playing in it (youtube) doesn't cause it to pause, unless I click on the video itself, which is what I'd expect.

I don't think my Win10 has updated to Anniversary edition (it is a corp version, updates managed by IT department).

geocom

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#1708120 23-Jan-2017 14:53

trig42:

I'm not really sure what your issue is?

I am on a laptop (Dell XPS13) running Win10. Using either an external mouse, or the trackpad, I can scroll inactive windows no problem (using trackpad, it is two fingers up or down on pad). Changing focus to a windows with a video playing in it (youtube) doesn't cause it to pause, unless I click on the video itself, which is what I'd expect.

I don't think my Win10 has updated to Anniversary edition (it is a corp version, updates managed by IT department).

Not sure if it was there pre anniversary update as my computer was brought after this. On my computer when ever I scroll a window with the touchpad it will remove focus from the current window and give it to the window I'm scrolling. Using a USB mouse works fine the window stays inactive.

My computer uses windows precision touchpad so there are no other programmes controlling the mouse that I know of and if they where I would also expect this sort of thing to be happening on the USB mouse. Interestingly it also does the same thing with pinch to zoom enabled and disabled(Still brings window forward when making the same motion on the trackpad).

With the clicking pausing the video it does the same with any click event. So if I click an item with a clickable action in an inactive window it will always do that action even when its not the active window.

Geoff E

pillmonsta

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#1711219 29-Jan-2017 00:13

geocom:

Scroll issue goes away with a external mouse but the click on an inactive window one still exists.

The trackpad in this computer is a synaptics one that works with microsoft's built in trackpad settings.

A Video may help.

@geocom: Synaptics drivers apparently have a bug which causes touchpads to intermittently hang just as in your video.

I only found out after a couple of my clients with HP ProBooks were complaining about the touchpads. The solution is to update the drivers (according to HP's support page).

I'd be interested to know if the update fixes things.... cheers.