Getting back/forward mouse buttons working as default

[Eric Dunbar]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 01:38:55 -0000 (GMT), Chris Jones wrote:
> On Thu, January 6, 2005 16:15, Eric Dunbar said:
> > That's _exactly_ why it's a great app with amazing potential. In my
> 
> I agree that imwheel is a great app, I used to use it myself to wrangle
> sane scrolling behaviour out of Netscape. However, I think it's generally
> better if applications have sane and fairly consistent scrolling behaviour
> out of the box. If you want the fine grained control, install imwheel and
> override the defaults. I also completely agree with your point about
> improving the imwheel configuration because it's clearly useful to some
> users (does it still make you scroll like crazy to bring up the config?)

No idea to what you refer with 'scroll like crazy' (or scroll control ;-).

> > imwheel is on the cusp of being able to provide this functionality to
> > Linux WITH THE SAME EASE OF USE -- the code base and (more
> 
> With sane default behaviours either in the applications or provided by a
> default imwheel configuration (that someone has to make and check against
> all the scrolling applications and keep checking) the user isn't going to
> notice what is making it work like that and the majority of users aren't
> going to really care to tweak lots of scroll configuration settings, so it
> makes more sense to provide the sane defaults in the applications, run one
> less daemon and leave the door open for enthusiasts to install imwheel and
> go wild ;)

You don't actually have to have the daemon *running*. That's what the
GUI is for -- once the user activates it, it starts up. Ubuntu _will_
eventually have to go two or more disks so soon package size will not
be an issue anyway ;P.


> > to do is more in line with the configuration philosophy inherent to
> > Linux (and just because it's configurable doesn't mean that it has to
> 
> Obviously I only speak for myself here, but I think the gnome HIG's:
> 
> "avoid the trap of allowing too much configuration, or allowing the
> configuration of parameters that most users will not understand or find
> useful to modify"

Absolutely! They've taken a page from Apple's HIGs and from what I
find to be a very workable philosophy.

> applies here. If imwheel was running by default its configuration tool
> would be about the most complicated among the various gnome settings
> programs presented in the ubuntu menus. Just for scrolling that seems out
> of balance.

I would suggest looking at Mouse Works if you can (and care,
obviously) for an example of an app that allows for a lot of
configurability but does not make it too difficult. Essentially it
does _everything_ that imwheel does but through a very easy to access
GUI.

Scrolling wasn't even on my radar screen (last I fiddled with
scrolling in Mouse Works was when my track ball lacked a scroll
wheel... when I clicked the top tow mouse buttons ("chord") at the
same time, I could use the track ball to scroll)! For a lot of people
three button (+ scroll wheel) mice are lacking a lot of functionality
because people don't (sometimes) use the second or (frequently) middle
mouse buttons. Oftentimes middle click doesn't do what I want it to --
with a three button mouse and imwheel (with an appropriate GUI) anyone
can reuse the middle mouse button for something more functional.

Eric.