Computer Hope
Other => Other => Topic started by: soybean on November 11, 2010, 12:27:59 PM
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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).
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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)
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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 :P
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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 :P
Oh, well, of course. I did not mean such features are hardware-coded in the mouse. ::)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It took some time to get use to but I actually use the auto-scroll feature a lot.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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Isn't that great - it's those simple things in life that keep us ;D
Any more discoveries since then?
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I know this discussion is getting old but I just had another discovery. If I'm using WLM (Windows Live Mail) with Windows 7. If I click on a message in WLM and then press sideward left or right with the tilt wheel, the message list scrolls up or down.
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I'm guessing you have that setting in the mouse properties ;)
Mine are set to copy (left) and paste (right)
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I'm guessing you have that setting in the mouse properties ;)
Mine are set to copy (left) and paste (right)
In the mouse properties, my wheel is simply set to AutoScroll. The software for the Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 I'm using with Windows 7 does not provide any special settings for the tilt function of the mouse wheel; it only has settings for the wheel "button", or pressing the wheel as a button. So, such discoveries as this seem to be things I have no way to change or control; they are apparently default behavior that can not be changed.
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Hmmm. Interesting. I only use Logitech so I'm not familar with MS mouse drivers.
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I NEVER use any Driver software that comes with mice. But that's just me.
Generally, the built-in generic mouse driver supports any number of buttons and scroll wheel axes; the default behaviour for the mouse driver is to send any number of well documented system messages for the various scrolling features of the mouse; in the case og horizontal "tilt" scrolling, the active window is sent WM_MOUSEHWHEEL messages.
Now, this might follow with a question such as "why is their mouse software to begin with" Well, that's pretty simple; the generic Windows-included driver can't possibly include everything, and the older versions included with older versions of windows didn't support many things; Windows 98 and earlier, for example and NT4, don't, by default, support any number of these messages- this includes those for any "wheel" messages.
Thing is, the "driver" software, as we all know, has essentially full control over what the mouse actually ends up doing; with windows 98SE for example, using a scroll-wheel mouse often requires to use of the included drivers, and the drivers themselves say "ahh, I'm running on a version that doesn't support the mouse wheel; I'll emulate it's functionality using different messages" and usually it ends up sending WM_VSCROLL and WM_HSCROLL messages; this is why you often see options for "how many lines" to scroll at a time.
Additionally, many drivers (such as the Intellipoint) will send their own "custom" message to the active window when the scroll whell or extra features of the mouse are used; if the program responds to that message with TRUE (meaning "yes, I have responded and acted on that message" the driver generally says "alright, cool, no need for me to hack about with you and send you scroll messages instead" otherwise, (if the active window ignores the message) the driver sighs and "emulates" the wheel actions using the messages for window scrolling. In general, it works well.
What this means however is of course that each application can do what they please for each message; but in some cases what happens is "generic" (when you get the H/VSCROLL messages instead) I believe this model was brought forward for compatibility; that is, Win7 still sends the various scroll messages if an application doesn't respond to the wheel messages.
When we speak of "programmable" mice, it's actually a misnomer; when you change the settings in a mouse control panel for what the tilt or scroll features do, you aren't programming how the mouse itself responds insomuch as you are programming what the driver tells your applications the mouse does for each feature; for example, if you enable the swap mouse buttons feature, windows itself will swap the various button messages to switch the parameters so left clicks are interpreted as right clicks; in the same fashion, "programming" the scroll and tilt wheel functions simply tells the driver what to send to the active window. In the case of Copy and Paste, for example, it's as simple as sending a WM_COPY or WM_PASTE message rather then the specific wheel scroll messages. (or the even more default window scroll messages).
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Purchase what ? ?
Yes, acquisitive minds need to. Where do we get a mouse with a loose wheel? What does it cost? Discounts for CH members?
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Yes, acquisitive minds need to. Where do we get a mouse with a loose wheel? What does it cost? Discounts for CH members?
Oh, you silly man. ::)
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By holding down "CNTRL" and moving center wheel of mouse, you can zoom in and out.
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By holding down "CNTRL" and moving center wheel of mouse, you can zoom in and out.
I believe that technique is one of the more widely known ones. Indeed, it is quite useful.
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O.K. then with slight pressure on the wheel to the right, rotate to zoom in and out......
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O.K. then with slight pressure on the wheel to the right, rotate to zoom in and out......
I'm not sure what you mean. I tried what you said but it doesn't work.