inspector closes too fast

I could reproduce the issue. Indeed, Taskbar Inspector seems to not be compatible with the "focus follows mouse" option.
What solution would you like to see? I prefer to avoid adding buttons to the inspector window. On the other hand, there has to be some option to close it with the mouse.

How about this: the tweaker will check for the conflicting option, and if it's turned on, it will not close upon focus loss, but it will if you right click on an empty space of the list, or the border. What do you think?

P.S. currently, you can hold Ctrl+Shift while opening the inspector to keep it open. Perhaps you'll find it useful.

I agree that it would be inelegant to add button(s) to the inspector.

The thing is, I did not notice this problem with the previous version of tweaker that I was using, so I'm wondering what changed, because I did not change my Windows settings that it's interacting with.  This makes me think that you have changed how you deal with focus, or you have changed how you put inspector on the screen relative to how Windows handles menus.

(Maybe I should try installing an older version to see if I can confirm what I am claiming, but I don't know where to find older versions, since installing the new one clobbered the old one.)

The trouble with checking for the focus-follows-mouse setting is that if MS changes how they store that, the fix will no longer work, but if you want to do it that way, I have no problem with that.

I would prefer that any click, not just right click, on empty space would close the inspector.  My reasons are:

1.  It's one more thing to have to remember about the UI.
2.  R-click on desktop normally triggers a context menu.  Hence, if you do it only on r-click, either the user will get a context menu when they are not expecting it, or might not get one when they are expecting it (depending on how exactly you implement it).
3.  Also, I assume you mean click on desktop, not on a blank area of inspector.  The latter would be bad, imho, since clicking on something usually selects it, not closes it.

As yet another option, what you might want to do is add yet another checkbox to the tweaker menu to toggle exit by focus vs exit by click.  That dialog is already so busy, yet another checkbox would be like a drop in the bucket.  Although I'm not sure whether the win32 api lets you do menus that way.  (Too many years since I looked at it.)

And, yet another option is instead of checking whether focus follows mouse is set, you might instead want to check the menu delay -- which I assume is why I have to move the mouse to the inspector really fast -- and temporarily change it to something longer until focus leaves the inspector, then pop back to original value.

And, thanks for working on this.  This is a very useful hack for me.

--peter

(Maybe I should try installing an older version to see if I can confirm what I am claiming, but I don't know where to find older versions, since installing the new one clobbered the old one.)

Yes, this is interesting. You can grab old versions of the tweaker here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mcbychsh0xc1dvu/8-Lj2sg...

The trouble with checking for the focus-follows-mouse setting is that if MS changes how they store that, the fix will no longer work, but if you want to do it that way, I have no problem with that.

This is documented, and shouldn't change in the future.
SPI_GETACTIVEWINDOWTRACKING

Also, I assume you mean click on desktop, not on a blank area of inspector. The latter would be bad, imho, since clicking on something usually selects it, not closes it.

Actually, I meant the inspector window, not the desktop. And that's why I talked about the right click.

As yet another option, what you might want to do is add yet another checkbox to the tweaker menu to toggle exit by focus vs exit by click.

I don't think there's a need for an option - detecting the accessibility option should work. The question is - what kind of click should trigger exiting?

And, yet another option is instead of checking whether focus follows mouse is set, you might instead want to check the menu delay

I'm not sure that it's related, and even if it is, I prefer not to change it with the tweaker.

Anyway, you're probably the only tweaker user who has this accessibility feature turned on, so think about a preferred exiting method (which is not difficult to implement :)) that you'd like to have.

I'll check out the old versions on dropbox.

Ok, regarding the clicking, any click you want me to do is ok.  R-click is ok; I'll just have to remember about it.  Or, maybe you can add a small X in say the upper right hand corner to close the inspector with a left-click.  At least that is more easily discoverable.  It could be there whether or not you have detected focus-follows-mouse, thus perhaps helping a naive user who doesn't realize the window will close when it loses focus.  Though I guess adding visible parts of the UI is more work.

Please try the latest beta version, v4.4.6.3.

Ok, that works for me. Thanks!!   I only tested the focus and close box;  presumably no new bugs.

I also reinstalled the previous version I was using, which was 4.2.7.  Indeed, the problem does not occur with that version.  The reason is that the inspector window in 4.2.7 comes up so that it encompasses the existing location of the mouse in the taskbar tray (recall I am using a left-of screen autohide taskbar).  That means that when inspector comes up, it covers the taskbar, but since the taskbar itself is redundant at that point, it doesn't matter.

However, in the later version 4.4.6, the inspector comes up to the right of the taskbar, so the mouse must leave the taskbar tray in order to reach the inspector.

In any case, I like the solution with the close box regardless of the problem I was having, because it can be disconcerting when a window closes just because it lost focus, especially for a new user.

Is the box only there if focus follows mouse, or did you add it for all situations?

--peter

That means that when inspector comes up, it covers the taskbar, but since the taskbar itself is redundant at that point, it doesn't matter.

Yep, that's how it worked before. I've changed it due to a request of one of the users. Overlapping the taskbar indeed seemed less correct.

Is the box only there if focus follows mouse, or did you add it for all situations?

It's there only if the "focus follows mouse" option is enabled.