Getting back/forward mouse buttons working as default

[Eric Dunbar]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 14:56:10 -0000 (GMT), Chris Jones wrote:

> On Fri, January 7, 2005 13:55, Eric Dunbar said:
> > No idea to what you refer with 'scroll like crazy' (or scroll control ;-).
> 
> Hmm. I'm pretty sure it was imwheel that did it, but something used to do
> mouse/scroll configuration and to get it's configuration window up you had
> to put the mouse over the root window and scroll up and down really
> quickly, it spotted this behaviour and displayed the window. It was quite
> quite annoying ;)

I'll have to try fiddling with that next time I boot into Ubuntu. I
just ran it from the shell with a switch (-c?).

> > 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
> 
> I was thinking more about memory usage - there are already too many little
> helper tools running away in the background, imo.

But if it's not *on* it doesn't use up any RAM :), just disk space.

> > obviously) for an example of an app that allows for a lot of
> > configurability but does not make it too difficult. Essentially it
> 
> I don't doubt for a moment that it is useful and good and powerful, but
> you said it yourself there, "lot of configurability" - that is *bad* for
> most users.

In many cases, yes, but this is a simple concept that most people who
are ready for it can easily grasp. The bell weather for its becoming
mainstream is that Apple is now providing configurability in their OS
for mouse actions (not buttons yet... kind of counter productive since
most Mac users will still only be using one button ;) -- it's not that
complicated.

PS speaking of really cool ideas -- has anyone implemented elements of
Apple's "Exposé" into GNOME (or perhaps are those behaviours
patented)? Specificially, I'm speaking of the "display all windows" or
"display desktop" by hitting an F-key or moving a mouse into a corner?
I suspect "display desktop" will be "easy" (as easy as it is to change
a key binding in GNOME without a decent GUI to do so) to implement
through an F-key as is (though, I don't use F-keys except to change
audio/eject disks so move mouse into corner would be far more useful).

Displaying all windows is a *really* useful feature if it's not
patented (on a Mac it works well even on a 400 MHz G3 (~600 MHz PIII)
so you could probably do this in xwindows on a 300 MHz PIII).

> Anyway, the decision is for Canonical people :)

True, or whoever has the energy to program the relevant apps.

Eric.