Rodents (mice)

[Ben Scott]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Kevin D. Clark
<kevin_d_clark at comcast.net> wrote:
> What kind of cool things do people normally do with mice with that
> have more than three buttons and a scroll wheel?

  Based entirely on the marketing brochures and Internet hearsay, here
are things which are supposedly possible and which I find interesting:

  2-axis scroll wheel.  It tilts side-to-side as well as spinning.  In
theory, you can scroll in all four directions.  Nice for big pages,
spreadsheets, etc.

  Extra buttons, mapped various ways.  Web browser forward/back.
Scroll up/down buttons, so you don't have to keep spinning a wheel,
you just click/hold the button.  Application or window selection,
either as buttons, or by holding one button and then spinning the
wheel.

  Vary button mapping by focused application.

  Variable mouse wheel friction, controlled via software.  So the
mouse wheel can spin freely on a web page, but go click-click-click to
select weapons in a game.

  "Side wheel", which appears to really be a four-position "hat
switch", as an alternative to spinning the main wheel for scrolling.

  Think "Emacs mentality, applied to a mouse".  ;-)

  I expect some of the above is a function of the bundled software, in
addition to or instead of the mouse hardware itself.  I'm curious if
such works with Linux, or if it's Wintendo only.  Since I do play
occasional Wintendo at home, I might be interested in such even if
Linux functionality is more limited.

-- Ben