How Windows Get the Keyboard: Focus

Documentation / Contents - Window Manager

• Overview of the Window Manager
• Desks: Your Virtual Desktops
  • Switching Desks
  • Moving a Window to Another Desk
• How Windows Get the Keyboard: Focus
  • The Three Focus Policies
• Moving, Resizing, and Minimizing Windows
  • Moving a Window
  • Resizing a Window
  • Minimizing a Window
  • Maximizing a Window
• The Window Menu
  • The Commands
  • Close Versus Exit
• Tiling Windows Into a Mosaic
  • Turning Tiling On

Other cards

• Copyright Information

How Windows Get the Keyboard: Focus

"Focus" is which window your typing goes to. Only one window has focus at a time, and cywm marks it by the color of its title bar. Clicking a window always gives it focus. What you choose here is only whether moving the mouse over a window ALSO gives it focus.

The Three Focus Policies

• Focus follows mouse: a window takes focus the moment the pointer moves over it, with no click needed. This is the traditional SGI (Silicon Graphics) behavior and the Blueprint default.
• Click to focus: only a click gives a window focus, and hovering never changes it.
• Automatic: focus follows the mouse on desks that are tiled, and click to focus on desks that are free-floating. This suits people who tile some desks and not others.

Changing the Policy

Open Blueprint Preferences for the window manager, which is the cywm-prefs program, and use the Focus tab. You can also edit the focus_policy line in the cywm.conf file by hand. The setting takes effect as soon as you save it; you do not need to restart.

See Tiling Windows Into a Mosaic for what "tiled" and "free-floating" mean.