wheel mouse discoveries

[soybean]

Have you ever discovered behavior or features of your wheel mouse, particularly a tilt-wheel mouse, that you were not aware until you discovered them by surprise? 

For example, I just discovered that my tilt-wheel will move forward or backward through photos on facebook and it will move the cursor right and left when composing a message in facebook.   

Another example: if you're using Firefox (I believe this applies to other browsers, too) and you have more tabs open than what can be displayed all at once, hovering your mouse pointer over the tabs bar and moving your mouse wheel scrolls the browser tabs right or left (this one I've know about for quite some time now).

[Salmon Trout]

After reading the above I discovered that on my Microsoft mouse I can perform a middle click by pressing the wheel on the left side so it moves to the right slightly (in addition to the familiar method of pressing the wheel down)

[BC_Programmer]

Have you ever discovered behavior or features of your wheel mouse, particularly a tilt-wheel mouse, that you were not aware until you discovered them by surprise? 

For example, I just discovered that my tilt-wheel will move forward or backward through photos on facebook and it will move the cursor right and left when composing a message in facebook.   

Another example: if you're using Firefox (I believe this applies to other browsers, too) and you have more tabs open than what can be displayed all at once, hovering your mouse pointer over the tabs bar and moving your mouse wheel scrolls the browser tabs right or left (this one I've know about for quite some time now).

All your examples are software features... scrolling through pictures or through tabs are not something that is designed into the mouse.

More precisely, it's the softwares support and use of those features that is unexpected

[soybean]

All your examples are software features... scrolling through pictures or through tabs are not something that is designed into the mouse.

More precisely, it's the softwares support and use of those features that is unexpected

Oh, well, of course.  I did not mean such features are hardware-coded in the mouse. 

[soybean]

MS Office 2007/2010 users and Windows 7 users can use the mouse wheel to scroll the ribbons at the top of the window in MS Office and in Paint and WordPad.

[Computer Hope Admin]

I've never found much use with the left-right movement but it may be helpful for those that don't know it's a possibility. My favorite feature still for the mouse wheel is the middle-click. Clicking any link with the mouse wheel to open a new tab and also if you middle-click any open tab it also closes that tab.

[soybean]

I've never found much use with the left-right movement but it may be helpful for those that don't know it's a possibility.

I'd bet that because you use a large monitor, and perhaps multiple monitors, and therefore usually don't have much need for horizontal scrolling.

My favorite feature still for the mouse wheel is the middle-click. Clicking any link with the mouse wheel to open a new tab and also if you middle-click any open tab it also closes that tab.

Yes, that's a good one.  I first became aware of it a few months ago when I attended a meeting of a local computer user's group and one of the other members and I were sitting at a computer and he told me about closing a tab by just clicking on the tab with the wheel button.  It worked on that computer we were using; I also tried it on another computer there and it worked on that one also.   But, after that meeting, I tried it at home on three computers and it worked on none of them.  However, just last night, I changed a setting for my mouse.  Prior to the change, I had it set to Universal Scroll.  I changed it to simply Middle Button and then it worked as you've explained.  This is on a Win XP system using Firefox and a Logitech mouse.

It still does not work on my other two computers (Win Vista and Win 7).  I briefly looked at mouse settings in the Win 7 system, with a Microsoft mouse, but didn't see a setting that seemed applicable to this. I think I'll experiment more with mouse settings on the two computers to see whether I can I make them work this way when using a browser. 

[49 M]

Center clicking in Win 7 gives you an automatic scroll. Just go above or below the arrow & it scrolls slow enough to read or move the courser farther away from the arrows & it will speed up.

[soybean]

Center clicking in Win 7 gives you an automatic scroll. Just go above or below the arrow & it scrolls slow enough to read or move the courser farther away from the arrows & it will speed up.

Clicking the wheel does that with any Window OS unless some particular mouse setting has disabled it.  AutoScroll still works on my Win XP system even after I changed the mouse setting to Middle Button, as mentioned in my previous post.  AutoScroll is a feature I've used, somewhat infrequently, for years. 

[Linux711]

I don't use the mouse wheel too often. I usually use it for scrolling pages, but that's it. There's something I discovered though. If you middle click the back button in firefox, it goes back in a new tab (you can also ctrl + click). I found that very useful.

[ATVCamper]

It took some time to get use to but I actually use the auto-scroll feature a lot.

[Helpmeh]

Another example: if you're using Firefox (I believe this applies to other browsers, too) and you have more tabs open than what can be displayed all at once, hovering your mouse pointer over the tabs bar and moving your mouse wheel scrolls the browser tabs right or left (this one I've know about for quite some time now).

Do you know how many tabs I had to open to try this? I usually have 4 tabs, 6 tops, open at once, how many do you use normally?

[soybean]

Do you know how many tabs I had to open to try this? I usually have 4 tabs, 6 tops, open at once, how many do you use normally?

Hey, Helpmeh, it depends on your monitor resolution and whether you are using the entire screen for your browser window or a portion of your screen.  So, the number of tabs you need to have open before the tabs will scroll using a wheel mouse varies.  With the 19 inch widescreen monitor I use with my Windows 7 system, I've gotten in the habit of using the Snap feature of Windows 7 to consume exactly half of my screen for my browser window.  I'm not on that computer now but I believe the number of tabs in that scenario is 8 -10 before tabs will start overflowing at one end of the tabs bar. 

It's not uncommon for me to have more than 10 tabs open, so I scroll the tabs with my mouse quite often.  Have you tried using your wheel mouse this way? 

[BC_Programmer]

I have 60 tabs open atm, so it's faster for me to use the dropdown menu then to scroll. If only because then I can read the full title of the tab.

[timepiece3]

Isn't that great - it's those simple things in life that keep us 
Any more discoveries since then?