I thought I posted this, but I don't see this in the discussion thread...

I've figured out one of the reasons that the DF switcher is more awkward to use than the Windows switcher. More often than not, I have a lot of apps open at once. Usually 3 or 4 rows in the switcher, or roughly up to 40% of my screen size. This means that, more often than not, the switcher opens with an item directly under my pointer.

When this happens with the DF switcher, the icon that appeared under my pointer is immediately highlighted, causing confusion to me as it's not the first item in the list of windows, as I would have expected. With the Win7 switcher, and actual mouse move must happen for the icon under the pointer to be highlighted. This makes for a much smoother experience.

Interesting note: While researching this, I also discivered that Win7 provides a 3-4 pixel buffer on mouse movements if the switcher appears with an item under the pointer. Only after this movement buffer is surpassed will the item be highlighted. The DF switcher changes the highlighted item after just one pixel of movement.

The grey hairs grow numerous on my head...

Getting there, but not completely fixed. The initial problem of an item appearing directly under the mouse pointer is fixed. However, once you move your mouse it's actually worse now. The item that you moved your mouse over stays as the active item through each subsequent Tab keypress. The white selection box still moves, and that window is actually activated once Alt is released, so it seems to be just the text that isn't updating properly.

This is easy to reproduce. You don't even have to start with your pointer in the Alt+Tab handler. You can move your pointer over an item after the handler is visible and leave it there.

Clear as mud?

Likely a flag that needs to be reset, because the few pixel movement threshold should reset as well.

This is looking much better in 6.1.