Ok, I finally got around to installing it.  Works!  Also, no new bugs that I noticed.

Oop, forgot to sign in again.  The above was from me.  Also, to clarify WHERE does the icon file need to exist? Installation dir?  (Which might be higher level than location of actual exe, I forget.)

I agree that that's an excellent solution, though it sounds like more implementation work than just your choosing to use a colored icon in the exe.

With the user-supplied icon option, I would request that the developer-default icon still be present somewhere as a fallback.  For example, the user *.ico could be garbage, or it might get deleted at some point.  So, now you get into the error-handling business.

Yes.  So, I fear you will tell me I should define, memorize, and use a keyboard shortcut?

My brain is very small, and it cannot cope with learning any more keyboard shortcuts.  I learned some keyboard shortcuts many years ago.  Since then my brain has atrophied and refuses to learn any more.  I need to save the few remaining neurons so that I can find my car in the parking lot after going to the store.

Thanks.  Yeah, I was aware of resourcehacker as well as others, but it's a  losing proposition to be going in and meddling in executables from others.  I thought you might see the wisdom of my suggestion, but whatever.

However, you could just choose a color other than white yourself.  I dunno, maybe you like white.  Obviously this is only for convenience to find it faster in the sys tray to click on, not for example trying to get it to work with Win 10, which conceivably might be a higher priority.

I left him a message on his blog here:  http://rammichael.com/about/comment-page-2#comment-4897

Thanks!  However, although that is a nice icon that would fulfill my requirements, I have no way to make that be the icon that 7tt actually uses in the system tray.  I believe that is something that must be determined by some resource in the executable.  Or, maybe you can tell me how to make that be the icon that appears in the system tray for 7tt?

Thanks.  I don't really care too much which color, as long as it's some color.  But if you want a recommendation, I'd stay away from green, since many tray icons already use that, and I would stay away from pure R, pure G, and pure B, since those are also common.  Let's see, the resistor color code for 7 is purple.  Or, you could try the weird raspberry and orange colors that are used in this userecho tracker.

The above was from me.  I forgot to sign in, and there seems to be no way to claim it retroactively.

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