Keeping a window permanently focused in XP

[ababo]

Hi everyone. Here's a problem I'm hoping someone can help me with.

Does anyone know of a way of keeping one window focused, while still being able to use the other window with your mouse, without focusing on it? For example, I sometimes play windowed games while browsing the internet as well. This results in me having to constantly click back and forth between windows when I click on a browser link and then want to enter keyboard commands in the game window. If I was able to keep it focused, I could use the keyboard on one window, and still use my mouse on the other, without the focus permanently shifting over to the browser window, or vice versa.

At the moment I use a tool called KatMouse (http://ehiti.de/katmouse/) which lets me scroll on one window using the mousewheel without having to focus on it, but it would be great to extend this to mouse clicks as well. I don't know if there are any tweaks or tools available which could help me do that, so any suggestions would be much appreciated! 

[Zero3K]

XNeat Windows Manager (http://www.xneat.com/windows_manager/) should be able to do what you're asking for.

Posted with ForumPilot Freeware v1.1

[ababo]

I just gave XNeat a try but it only has an option to keep a window on top of all the others. I'm looking for something that will keep a window focused, even if I click on another window.

[Deozaan]

There are some programs that dim your screen on everything except the window with focus. These might disallow clicking elsewhere.

[nudone]

maybe there's is a clever trick to do what you are asking - but it sounds like something windows can't do.

i.e. you can't have TWO windows in focus at the same time. at least, i've never witnessed it.

[ababo]

Yeah, I didn't think that having two windows in focus was something that windows could do, but maybe there's a way to snap back to the previous window. So for example, I could click on a link in my unfocused browser window, the focus would switch to that for a moment, and then it would quickly revert back to the previously focused window.

[AndyM]

for example, I could click on a link in my unfocused browser window, the focus would switch to that for a moment, and then it would quickly revert back to the previously focused window.

-ababo (November 19, 2007, 07:24 AM)

Someone (else) should be able to write something in autohotkey that, when running, would check every few seconds to see if "TheGame" is running and if so, return focus to it.  This would give you time to click someplace else and have focus automatically return to "TheGame".  The script could get more sophisticated (not hard coding "TheGame", user input to select the window to return to, automatically selecting the most recent window, include starting and stopping the game in the script, etc.)

[ababo]

I've used scripts for AutoHotkey before, but never written one myself. I'll have a look through the documentation and see if there's a way I can make this work. I think I'll also post this as an idea in the Coding Snacks forum and see what happens.