With Active Window Tracking On, Start Menu Button Doesn't Always Work

First, a little background. And please forgive me for the long post about something that some of you might consider to be a seemingly minor issue. I've explicated this issue in detail because I think the issue is not widely known or understood. I submit this as a constructive suggestion to improve Start 8 to give it more flexibility and make it work more like the Start Button and Menu on Windows versions prior to Windows 8.

I am a member of a minority of Windows users who like to have "active window tracking" ON, so that hovering the mouse pointer over a window "activates" the window (sort of like X-mouse in 'nix or 'nux). In Windows 95 and above, this can be accomplished using a Registry tweak, shown near the bottom of this post. Some of you may remember that there once was a third-party Windows app, Tweak-UI, which had an X-mouse setting option, but this app is no longer functional on newer versions of Windows. This functionality can now be attained by using a nifty little app called X-Mouse Button Controls, available on CNET and elsewhere. It works fine on Windows 8. A similar utility, TX-Mouse, is long outdated.) You can find an older technical discussion of these registry settings at "UserPreferencesMask - TechNet - Microsoft" or "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask - MSFN Forum" and elsewhere.

You can get similar (but not identical) results by using a setting in Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > "Make the mouse easier to use" > "Make it easier to manage windows" > "Activate Window By Hovering Over It With the Mouse".

Using the proper Registry settings or the X-Mouse Button Controls utility, you can determine whether the active window will be RAISED to the top of the Z-order or MERELY ACTIVATED WITHOUT RAISING. As I recall, checking the "Activate a window by hovering..." in Ease of Access normally sets this to ALWAYS RAISE the window, which many of us don't want. Therefore, I use the registry tweak or X-Mouse Button Controls to activate but NOT RAISE the window.

The problem is that this setting understandably affects the workings of the Start 8 Start Menu, as Start 8 is an application or "window," just like any other application window. (Start 8 is not an explorer.exe process as was the old Start Menu before Windows 8. The significance of this should soon be apparent.) The result is that, in Start 8, when another window is activated (but NOT necessarily at the top of the Z-order), clicking the Start 8 Start Button fails to cause the Start 8 Start Menu to be displayed. Actually, to be more precise, the Start 8 Menu pops up for a split second, but the active window steals the focus, causing the Start 8 Menu to immediately close after popping up for a moment. When another window is activated, you must click on Start 8's Start Button 2 or 3 times to make the Start Menu stay open. I have established this as a fact through months of testing and observation.

The inbuilt Start Menu that came with pre-Windows-8 OSes did not have this problem, provided that one used the proper settings in the registry tweak. That is, unlike Start 8, the Start Menu displayed normally on the first click of the Start Button, even when another window was activated.

Please note that the minutiae of this behavior will be affected by various precise details of the registry tweak used, and that the specific values of the UserPreferencesMask setting in the registry tweak can differ between users or systems. Further, without the proper settings in the registry tweak, it is possible to actually ACTIVATE THE DESKTOP when you hover over it with the mouse. This is almost always unwanted because you don't want the Desktop to steal the focus from your application windows.

My question is this: can Start 8 developers correct this behavior in Start 8 so that the Start 8 Start Menu will open and STAY open on the first click on the Start 8 Start Button, even when another application window is active (using the "activate window" registry setting)? If Start 8's behavior is changed in this way, Start 8 will match the old Start Menu's behavior in this regard. And isn't Start 8 supposed to emulate (for the most part) the old Start Menu (except, of course, for Start 8's improvements over the old Start Menu)? I have not tried any of the myriad other Start Bar/Start Menu replacements.

I've played with all the Start 8 config settings/options and have been unable to get the behavior I'm seeking. At first I thought the 1.16 Beta had fixed this problem, but soon found that it did not.

Here is an EXAMPLE of the registry tweak I've described. Note that this might not work the same on your system. The UserPreferencesMask value used to achieve the "activate window" behavior might be slightly different on your system. I suggest you try the "X-Mouse Button Controls" utility to duplicate the behavior I've described and then examine the new values in the registry. Lastly, the registry contains a couple of other related settings, such as ActiveWndTrkTimeout, in addition to ActiveWindowTrackTimeout, which might influence this behavior. It's been awhile since I last modified these settings, so I don't remember right now whether additional settings had to be changed.

Example of registry tweak which will cause hovered-over window to be activated:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] 
"ActiveWndTrackTimeout"=dword:00000096
"UserPreferencesMask"=hex:9f,3e,07,80,12,00,00,00