If you`re a longtime Florida resident, you`ve probably cursed him a time or two, even if you don`t know his name. His invention is responsible for indoor lizards, cold drafts and creeping vines, as well as mosquitoes buzzing your ears at night and burglars toting off your grandmother`s silver service. His name is Van Ellis Huff. He invented the jalousie window-symbol and bane of life in Florida.

Huff, a Miami pioneer and sailing buff, died last month at age 93. He died at home, in his condominium overlooking Sailboat Bay. It does not have jalousie windows.

Alas, even inventors have to face the obsolescence of a one-time dream, and Huff recognized that his window-the rage of `40s and `50s Florida architecture-had run its course. As mean temperatures dropped and the crime rate rose, jalousies gradually lost favor.

''The thieves pretty much made them obsolete, and he knew that,'' said Robert Hardin, coauthor of Huff`s autobiography, ''From Mountains to Miami.'' Most people, unless they happen to have jalousies, probably don`t give the window much thought. Like palm trees and cockroaches, they are but one Florida staple taken for granted. Yet jalousie windows, patented in 1939 and popularized in the early `40s, represent an era, a lifestyle even, in Florida. It was during the years before air conditioning, a time when tropical breezes were courted, when palm trees rustled in the night, when fear of intrusion was only a child`s nightmare.

Huff, an avid sailor, was slooping around Bimini and became fascinated by the island`s wooden-slat plantation shutters. They were attractive and functional, allowing a controlled breeze while keeping out harsh sun and rain. The shutters had a vertical bar in the middle that, when raised or lowered, opened and shut the horizontal wood slats.

Huff, described by Hardin as a man with an inventive streak, set to work translating this into a window treatment that was compatible with screens. He did this by creating a small gear that allowed the shutters to be opened with a crank handle from inside the screen, creating a sort of louvered window.

He borrowed the name jalousie from the French word jelousie, meaning jealousy. Apparently a similar Bahamian shuttered window was popular in New Orleans at the time. A feature of the New Orleans shutter, which was made from wood, was that it allowed one to look out without being seen from within, making it a proper courting window. Young men would try to attract the attention of their heart`s desire while she watched from her discreet perch.

Somehow the word ''jealousy'' became associated with this ritual, hence Huff`s derivation.

Jealousy was an apt adjective to describe initial reaction to the jalousie`s immediate success. Even though Huff held the patent on the window, a half-dozen imitators appeared almost immediately, making small variations here and there. One example was a window that permitted the opening of five or six slats at a time.

There was good reason for the sudden surge in interest. There was money to be made. And, according to nationally renowned Miami architect Alfred Browning Parker, the jalousie initially was heralded as nothing short of brilliant by no less than the National Academy of Sciences. Parker himself played a role in this. He and a group of other architects, engineers and scientists wrote a report for the academy titled ''Weather and the Building Industry,'' in which the function of jalousies was outlined.

''The purpose of the jalousies was to control the breeze. You could open them a little and get air in without blowing things all over the room,''

Parker explained. ''You also could open them in banks and in different directions, creating a flow of air through the rooms.''

Parker used jalousies in several of his early homes, one of which was described by House Beautiful as ''the house with the breeze built in.'' He still designs houses using the jalousie principle. A favorite application is putting jalousies in the bottom part of a house to let in a breeze and aluminum-slat jalousies high in the house to let hot air escape.

Parker`s boosterism may be unique, however. Few people use jalousies anymore. No one mass produces them. You can still get parts for repair-and you can have them custom-made-but by and large, nobody seems to want them.

''I don`t like them,'' said Don Johnson, an Orlando architect. ''I think it`s a poorly designed window, especially now that the climate is changing. We`re getting cooler weather.''

''It`s the easiest window to break into,'' said Lynn Hamlin, owner of a window company in Maitland. ''When they were invented, you didn`t have the problems with robberies.''

''The only thought that anyone gives jalousie windows anymore is that nobody uses them,'' said Steve Feller, an architect in Winter Park. ''I didn`t even know they had an inventor; they`re just always there.''

But what about Floridiana? Isn`t there an ounce anywhere of nostalgia for a bygone art form? In a nation that loves art deco and pastel-painted stucco, is there no room for jalousie windows?

Apparently not.

''I have never heard anyone mention they would like to return to the jalousie,'' said Feller, who does a lot of restoration work.

''I don`t care about them,'' said Harold Kemp, who teaches architectural history at the University of Florida.

Indeed, although still in widespread use in Florida, the jalousie has about as much chance of survival as the buggy whip. . . Unless!

There is one shred of hope for jalousies` longevity, said Kemp. Ironically, air-conditioning, the very invention that nudged jalousies out of the market, may have contributed to a new problem that jalousies could solve: radon.

Radon is an odorless, colorless, naturally occurring radioactive gas that has been recognized as a health hazard, contributing to as many as 20,000 deaths annually from lung cancer.

''Part of the problem is houses are too tightly closed up,'' Kemp said.

''One of the ways of combating it is with very good ventilation. Who knows, maybe jalousies will make a return.''

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