There are those are very happy to get by with the standard two-button mouse (not to mention those who subsist on Apple’s benighted but very stylish one-button affair), but some want more! Scroll wheels, extra buttons, launchers, gestures . . . the mind boggles.
So share your mouse configurations.
I’ll start.
Running the latest version of Mac OS X. Kensington mouse with five buttons, including a scrollwheel that doubles as a button.
Left and right buttons as usual.
Far left button sends a keystroke of command-[. This is equivalent to the back button in most Mac browsers. It also works in the Finder and the Help program.
The scrollwheel button sends a keystroke of command-H. In Mac OS X, this hides the current application.
The far right button sends the keystroke command-W. This closes the currently active window.
Hitting the two standard L&R buttons simultaneously sends a keystroke of F9: this activates Mac OS X’s Exposé mode (for those not in the know, this shows all open windows from all applications in miniature, tiled across the screen; clicking on one brings it forward and exits the mode).
These mods are an integral part of my computing life, and it’s hard when I have to do without them. So share your own indispensible mouse customizations! I d
I use have a Logitech optical mouse and use Mozilla Firefox for a browser. I have tried a lot of the extentions but one of my favorites is the Mouse Gestures.
I still haven’t quite got them all memorized but I use the hell out of the back, forward, new tab, new windows functions.
On the right, I have a Logitech wireless trackball (7 buttons plus clickable scrollwheel - 8 buttons altogether). Click, double-click, command-click, control-click, page up, page down, and previous application.
Now, on the left, I have a Belkin Nostromo n52. Buttons out the wazoo. 14 keys, a clickable scrollwheel, 8-way d-pad and two more buttons. Did I mention that the 14 keys have four states? (Clear, red shift, blue shift & green shift). Let’s see. I’ve got the d-pad set to function as mouse movements, the top button is a mouse click key 15 is enter, keys 01, 08 and 11 set red, blue and green shift respectively. I’ve got page up and page down keys, home and end keys, arrow up, down, left & right, document open and close keys. I’ve got it set to launch specific apps (Safari, Word, Mail, Unison, etc) on red shift, specific documents on blue shift and folders on green shift.
In fact, I’ve got more buttons on this thing than I can remember. Is Safari red-02? Don’t remember, so I’ve got to go look. Nope, it’s red-03 - red-02 is Shiira.
Holy crap, how the hell do you use that? My hand hurts just looking at it.
I have the standard Dell optical mouse with two buttons and a clickable scroll wheel and I might finally download and install mouse gestures now that Mermaid’s finally made me realize they might be useful. Until now, I’ve never seen the point.
I have the standard MS Intellimouse optical. It just feels good in my hand (doesn’t cramp up,) and the buttons are in the perfect spot for me. Left and rtight click is usual, scroll wheel scrolls, clicking scrool wheen does…whatever it does (I guess makes it so I can scroll by moving mouse.) The left side button is set to CTRL, so I can click multiple files very easily. The right side button? That’s my secret weapon. It’s set to minimize the current window. Man oh man, is that handy!
Oh, I also ripped out the ugly red LED and replaced it with a cool blue LED.
I got one of these for Christmas. I LOVE it. Being able to use the ‘pen pressure’ settings in Photoshop completely opens up new ways of drawing and coloring.
I used to use my Thrustmaster X-45 as a mouse (just for fun). Needless to say, it was large and hard to use, but alas, it has over 15 buttons with 9 different states for each button. As well, it has a shift pinky trigger you could pull to shift to a secondary button mapping. Needless to say, it has a rediculas number of buttons you can hit, I used 5.
Currently I have two mice on my system, a logitex MX700 (wireless) and a logitech trackball. The MX700 I use to game with and the trackball I use to surf the web with. The MX700 has had its internal weight removed so its easier to move, and uses a blue LED too. There is also the mouse graveyard just 5 feet from where I sit. The mice dont like me to talk about that though…
With all those customizations I thought somebody would have physically changed the mouse. Software customizations are available to anyone - a custom rewiring is yours alone. Okay, I’ll give away my secret mouse customization. Many years ago the left mouse button switch (the ‘click’ thing) stopped conducting. Sure I could have thrown it away but I like to experiment.
I left the button where it was but I soldered two wires at the points where the switch completed the cicuit. Then after removing some insulation from both of the wires, I burned the wires into the plastic of the mouse. Fooling around with the bare ends of the wires you can adjust the “action” so you only require the slightest pressure to activate it. A paper clip can be used in place of one of the wires so that it has a stronger ‘up’ push. Also, I have connected these wires above the right mouse button. This is not so much to make it easier to use the right button but if you are right handed, the mouse fits into your hand much more easily. The great advantages of this are:
it is ridiculously easy to work the mouse (no carpal tunnel syndrome for me) AND:
It is totally quiet - no annoying “clicks”.
Me too! I got the 6x8 in graphite. Between the tablet and my Kensington Expert Mouse (which is really a trackball), I only use my stock Apple Pro Mouse with my laptop at work or when I’m playing golf (on the computer, real golf courses aren’t air conditioned yet :)).
I have the trackball’s buttons 3 & 4 configured for Exposé. Button 3 is All Windows (f9), button 4 is Desktop (f11), and 3 & 4 together is Application Windows (f10).
I’m also a big fan of screen corners. I keep bottom left as Start Screen Saver and top right as Disable Screen Saver. Recently I added bottom right as Exposé All Windows.
I’ve read online that the pens are kind of fragile, Wacom lists them at $30, so if it craps out it’s not the end of the world.
I use a Wacom tablet and pen as well. I’m the only person I know in RL who uses them exclusively instead of the mouse; I was really hoping to be the first person to mention this in this thread.
Oh, that kind of customization. Well, back in tha day, my roomie’s C-64 joystick shit the bed. Rather than buy a new one, we went to Radio Shack & bought five small pushbutton switches and one of their smaller blue plastic project boxes. We cut the cable off the joystick & wired up the switches - one each for up, down, right, left and fire, then put them into the project box. The roomie’s mom thought we were some kind of geniuses for even thinking of it, much less doing it. And the roomie got better scores with the “joybox” than he’d ever managed w/the joystick.
I use a Logitech MX300 mouse and Firefox with Mouse Gestures and Tabbrowser Preferences turned on.
OTOH, I remember several years ago reading about someone who made a mouse that looked uncannily like a severed hand. It was realistic enough to gross out almost everyone who looked at the photos. If I can figure out how to make Google spit it out, I’ll post a linky.
