I did it again. It's not the first time. I created something that looks very interesting, but I have yet to decide if it's useful in the first place. I called it slimSMOKE, and you probably guessed by its name that it's a slimKEYS plug-in.
Does it happen often you work on your computer and start typing just to realize the active application is not the one you thought? It can get you in trouble if what you type has some matching actions in that other application. slimSMOKE dims inactive applications*, so the active window jumps out of the crowd.
My initial feeling working with slimSMOKE is "cool", but I need feedback. If you like to test beta software, go get beta 1.1.3 and tell me your thoughts. The color, opacity and refresh rate are all configurable. You can toggle slimSMOKE on and off by pressing Win-M.
If you try this new beta version on Vista, you'll also get the chance of testing Vista support for slimVOLUME (finally). I'll have more to say about this later, I have someone to thank about this, but he doesn't know.
Have fun!
* (Actually, it dims everything except the active application. This means the desktop is also dimmed. I could have dimmed only top-level windows, but this extra processing is making slimSMOKE use too much resources for my taste, and the desktop itself can be "selected".)