Turn off implicit selection in Windows Explorer tree view

[Guest]

Prior to updating to IE version 6 on a Windows 2000 machine, the Windows
Explorer application had the following behavior:
When using the split view (with the folder tree in the left pane, and
contents on the right), when you clicked on a whitespace area (anywhere not
explicitly on a icon or accompanying text) in the left pane, the focus would
be changed to the left pane, and the current folder selection would be
highlighted. This is useful if you've just selected files on the right, and
now want to use the mouse wheel to scroll down to a destination folder in the
left pane, and therefore simply want the pane selected for scrolling. (In
order to select a folder on the left pane, you would simply click on that
folder's icon or accompanying text.)
Now however (on Windows 2000 machine with IE 6 or later, or on Windows XP),
if you click in the white area anywhere in the left pane (other than the area
below the tree/list), the folder (or other icon) on the left horizontally
across from the clicked area is selected, and the right pane changes
accordingly to the newly selected folder's contents. This can be quite
annoying if you've made an explicit selection of various files/folders in the
right pane of the [now] previous left pane folder selection, as the selection
is now lost.
I would love to find out how to make the Windows Explorer application behave
as before, where the folder selection was not implicit in the left pane.
I've seen nothing in the options, or downloadable tools/utilities (tweak,
etc.) to change the behavior back to pre IE 6 functionality, of course it is
possible that I've simply missed something. I suspect however (or at least
hope) that I'm looking for some sort of registry key to change the value of.
Any help would be immensely appreciated.

 

[Gert B. Frob]

Click on the up-down scroll bar on the right side of the left pane. Your
mouse should now be active in the left pane without changing any selection
in either pane.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for you response. While clicking on the scrollbar buttons or dragging
the scrollbar will work to scroll in the window without changing the
selection, it does not change focus to the left pane and allow use of the
wheel mouse. Of course depending on the vertical height of the expanded
tree, the amount of real estate available to click on for this can be quite
limited as well.
Additionally, I found that you can middle click on either pane anywhere, and
it will change focus to the corresponding pane without changing any
selection. This is functionally the same for focus change I was looking for,
however I am still interested if anyone knows how to change the actual
behavior of the windows explorer to it's previous rule set.
Fundamentally, I think if a vendor is going to add a behavioral change as
part of a 'feature' (especially in an effectively mandatory upgrade, as using
ie pre version 6 is quite a miserable experience), they should provide a way
to use the application with the previous behavior.

Click on the up-down scroll bar on the right side of the left pane. Your
mouse should now be active in the left pane without changing any selection
in either pane.

Prior to updating to IE version 6 on a Windows 2000 machine, the Windows
Explorer application had the following behavior:
When using the split view (with the folder tree in the left pane, and
contents on the right), when you clicked on a whitespace area (anywhere not
explicitly on a icon or accompanying text) in the left pane, the focus would
be changed to the left pane, and the current folder selection would be
highlighted. This is useful if you've just selected files on the right, and
now want to use the mouse wheel to scroll down to a destination folder in the
left pane, and therefore simply want the pane selected for scrolling. (In
order to select a folder on the left pane, you would simply click on that
folder's icon or accompanying text.)
Now however (on Windows 2000 machine with IE 6 or later, or on Windows XP),
if you click in the white area anywhere in the left pane (other than the area
below the tree/list), the folder (or other icon) on the left horizontally
across from the clicked area is selected, and the right pane changes
accordingly to the newly selected folder's contents. This can be quite
annoying if you've made an explicit selection of various files/folders in the
right pane of the [now] previous left pane folder selection, as the selection
is now lost.
I would love to find out how to make the Windows Explorer application behave
as before, where the folder selection was not implicit in the left pane.
I've seen nothing in the options, or downloadable tools/utilities (tweak,
etc.) to change the behavior back to pre IE 6 functionality, of course it is
possible that I've simply missed something. I suspect however (or at least
hope) that I'm looking for some sort of registry key to change the value of.
Any help would be immensely appreciated.