Mouse tips
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Scroll wheel

 

If you have a mouse with a wheel between the left and right mouse buttons, you can use it to scroll up and down the page. If you click the button, you can scroll in any direction simply by moving the mouse. To stop scrolling, click the button again.

 

Zooming

 

The scroll wheel can also be used as a zoom wheel. Hold the CTRL key down and, in any application whose view can be zoomed in and out, you can zoom in and out simply by turning the wheel.

 

KatMouse

The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes).

Another feature involves the wheel button. Since the wheel button is not consistently used in Windows, KatMouse can use it for a kind of task switching: with a click of the wheel button you can push a window to the buttom of the stack of windows that is your desktop, making a recovered window the active window.

Problems:

  • KatMouse does not work together with Logitech Mouseware.
  • Mouse cursors freezes for a short time then minimizing windows if window animations are active. Cause: unknown. Solution: Deactivate window animations.
  • There are some application which will not fully cooperate with KatMouse (Office 2000 comes to mind). This usually results in the old scrolling behavior (scrolling window with keyboard focus) for this application.

KatMouse is free software available from http://kickme.to/katmouse.

Mouse gestures

Mouse gestures were first seen in the Opera web browser. They have since been added to Mozilla-based browsers by Mozilla.org and to Windows generally by StrokeIt. Opera is advertising supported, Mozilla is free and StrokeIt is free for personal use.

What are mouse gestures? You press mouse button, draw a gesture, and release mouse button (you can choose which button to use in advanced preferences). For example, in your email program you might draw a B to open the address book and an M to check for new mail. If the gesture drawn is recognised the appropriate action is triggered.

If the idea appeals to you, check these websites for more information.

http://www.opera.com

http://www.mozilla.org

http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/