Activation follows mouse, possible?

[chelsel]

Switching from Windows to Mac... one annoyance is that you must usually click on a window to 'activate it' before you can start interacting with the controls on the window...

Is there a way to activate a window so that as soon as I initiate a text-select or button-click it happens without having to click the window first?

 

[chelsel]

Is there no way to do this? It seems like a click-fest using my Mac, especially in a multi-monitor setup... this is such a small usability feature that the Mac must incorporate it... anyone?

 

[Mumford]

The terminology you want to search for is "focus follows mouse". I was able to find one program (MondoMouse) on versiontracker that enables this.

 

[chelsel]

tried that... not exactly what I'm looking for but thanks for the recommendation. The problem with MondoMouse is that it raises the windows... I don't want the windows to raise, just allow focus to the window for an event, such as a click or keypress.

This isn't a major issue, just an annoyance. In Windows I actually operate in single-click mode... so starting applications from a folder or desktop only requires one click (like using links in a web browser)... so I'm even more accustomed to not a lot of clicking when using Windows.

Cliff.

 

[apfhex]

I've never used such a feature on any OS, I don't see the usefulness in it (or maybe I'm just too used to Exposé, command-`, and other shortcuts), but one thing you can do in OS X is use command-click to perform some actions to a window that's in the background, such as scrolling and text selecting. This won't activate the window.