Mouse wheels are a great invention, too bad they went overboard in designing them.
There are two ways to use a mouse wheel: 1. rotate the wheel and the active window scrolls with it; 2. push down on the wheel, slide the mouse up and down and the active window scrolls.
Personally, I find number 1 to be very useful and number 2 to be an invention of the devil. Is there any way I can disable number 2 without disabling number 1? This would be in Win98.
Beside the fact that number 2 is not at all useful and occasionally interferes with number 1, sometimes in IE, a new page will be opened up and IE thinks that the mouse wheel has been pushed down. It took me a while to figure this out as the mouse pointer doesn’t change, but keyboard inputs are ignored. The only way to fix them is to click the wheel to get it out of that mode.
Of course, disabling number 2 may not fix this bug and may make it impossible to get out of that mode, but I’d like to try anyway. Does anyone know how to disable it? Is there a registry entry or something I can change?
I don’t know if there’s any way to turn off one but not the other. As far as I know, the wheel is either on or off. I believe you can reasign that button to do something else though, instead of that wierd souse scroll. Check the mouse section of the Control Panel. I’ve never had the problem you mention with IE, so I’m not sure what it’s doing.
If you’re using the Microsoft wheel mice, you can change the behavior of the wheel button. Go into your Intellipoint software (if not installed, install it; it came with your mouse), and select wheel button action. I have mine to be Enter, just so I can use it as a button in games. Your Intellipoint software (or other mouse software if it’s a logitech or other mouse) can be accessed via the Mouse Control panel, or by the little mouse icon in your Systray (that is, if you’ve chosen it to be there.) If your mouse Control Panel doesn’t have this option, you haven’t installed the software that came with the disk. Find the disk, and install it. (or DL it from the manufacturers website)
That’s odd; with the mouse that I’m using right now, if I use the wheel button, the mouse cursor changes to a little black dot with triangles pointing above and below it (or to the sides, if the window can scroll sideways). I never use it that way (although I love the rolling wheel), but it doesn’t seem to be too prone to accidental clicking, either.
Chronos, besides the wheel action, the wheel switch is independent and just like any 3 button mouse and you can program it from the control panel for whatever you want.