5th May 2000

The Windows Explorer may be no Magellan, but it never fails to surprise me. I was performing a drag & drop operation between two windows (one being Explorer, and the other, an FTP application). The problem: I had to get a file from one window to the other (Explorer to FTP) without bringing the Explorer window to the top. With the FTP app in the foreground, I grabbed an icon in Explorer and started dragging it. Normally (I thought), this would cause the Explorer window to rise to the top -- but that's not what happened. I could drag and drop any object (in the visible part of the 'backgrounded' Explorer window) without Windows switching focus. Success! Sure, I could have moved the windows to accommodate my need, but this route was much quicker. Summary: you can manipulate objects in background Explorer windows.