Is there a way to stop mouseover popups?

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As computers and Windows get smarter, some great innovations are hard on those of us with disabilities. I have tremor, so my mouse often goes where I don’t want it. Every web site these days seems to be configured so that as soon as your pointer touches a menu, it pops up with all the options. I don’t want that; I want to have to click on the menu before the options pop up and cover 3/4 of my laptop screen.  Is this possible?

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DrBonzo

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That’s a good question. This would be a great topic for the accessibility forum.

Browser addons like Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, and Violentmonkey can be used with custom user scripts (which you can download) to disable mouseover effects, but there’s no guarantee that the same functionality will be available by clicking.  Sites that have flyout effects like you describe generally do have an existing on-click function for the screen element, and often that will take you to a place where you can select all the same things that would have been available in the flyout, but that’s up to the web developer.

I am glad you brought this issue up, as I must admit I had not considered that particular site function’s effect on people with tremor.  Perhaps you could send a comment using the feedback form or email address on the site. Accessibility concerns should be high on the list of issues for web devs to fix… whether or not they actually are remains to be seen.  The Firefox and Chrome devs may be receptive also… a feature that hides the mouse position from the page until the user presses a certain key (in effect turning the flyout menu on) could be something they would be willing to do.  Or, perhaps there is an addon that already does this? I did a quick search and didn’t find any, but I could have missed something.

It occurs to me that touchscreen devices don’t use mouseover or hover effects, since there’s no actual mouse pointer to hover over anything. Maybe if you selected a mobile user agent, essentially telling the site you are using (for example) an iPad or an Android phone when you are really using a PC, they will not have the mouseover effects programmed in, since they’re meaningless on mobiles?

To do that, you can use one of the many addons that will allow you to easily spoof the useragent string, so you can pretend to be any device you want. In Firefox/Waterfox, I use one called “User Agent Switcher and Manager,” but there are lots of others too if that one does not work for you, on Chrome and derivatives as well as Firefox. I don’t know about Edge.

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Rick Corbett, satrow, Elly

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How to disable mouse hover in Windows 10

How to disable mouse hover in Windows 7

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Elly

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There could be several settings that could affect this behavior depending on where you are.

If it is in the browser, which browser are you using?

Do you also mean in File Explorer?

Do you also mean the Start Menu?

--Joe

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