Author Topic: Reminder: Clean your mouse occasionally... (Read 7268 times)

keyb_gr · « **on:** Thu, 17 December 2009, 07:16:14 »

Today I decided to give my trusty Logitech M-BJ58 a thorough cleanup. Yuck. It's amazing how much stuff can accumulate in all of these little grooves over the years (at the scroll wheel, at the edges of buttons, ...). An old toothbrush tends to be useful in getting it out.

itlnstln · « **Reply #1 on:** Thu, 17 December 2009, 08:29:38 »

I never understood why manufacturers leave such big grooves on the seams of mice. I have seen some that could hold a 5-course meal (and have cleaned some that actually have a 5-course meal in the seams).

microsoft windows · « **Reply #2 on:** Sat, 19 December 2009, 08:24:26 »

I don't bother cleaning my mice. As long as they work I'm happy with them.

ch_123 · « **Reply #3 on:** Sat, 19 December 2009, 10:08:29 »

Do you at least clean the rollers?

microsoft windows · « **Reply #4 on:** Sat, 19 December 2009, 11:47:06 »

I clean the rollers when they affect the mouse's performance, i.e. when my tracking ball gets choked up with dust and has a hard time rolling.

HaaTa · « **Reply #5 on:** Sun, 20 December 2009, 19:17:29 »

Somehow I don't miss cleaning the rollers. Once I discovered cleaning the rollers, every time I sat at a computer I would take a look at the rollers before I even started logging in...
I should add my Super Nintendo mouse to my list of rodents (It still works good, only ever used it with Mario Paint, got it in '93).

microsoft windows · « **Reply #6 on:** Mon, 21 December 2009, 19:25:23 »

You take scroll wheels pretty seriously there! Personally, I prefer using the middle mouse button to a scroll wheel. It's much faster for scolling. But I've met people who like rolling the wheel. At a high sensitivity, I bet it's pretty good too.

ricercar · « **Reply #7 on:** Mon, 21 December 2009, 21:12:09 »

Is that a scroll wheel or are you happy to meet us?

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #8 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 07:57:14 »

Quote from: microsoft windows;144352

You take scroll wheels pretty seriously there! Personally, I prefer using the middle mouse button to a scroll wheel. It's much faster for scolling.

You're referring to pressing down the middle mouse to get the floaty thing up that puts you in scroll mode? (No idea what the terminology is -- will be something strange.)

Tordex Wheel permits you to scroll the window under the cursor in Windows using the mouse wheel, without having to focus it (like on a Mac or in Linux). The Red Squirrel Acorn emulator implements wheel scrolling similarly, for example I've been able to use my mouse wheel (probably laptop trackpad actually) to scroll up the contents of a toolbar:

However, the click-get-arrows_in_circle_thing-move-mouse-to-scroll doodad is missing from various programs including Windows Explorer (in XP), JujuEdit, Photoshop 7, and Thunderbird (including TB 3), which is a pain.

Nice idea, a little unwieldly, but where the hell is it? Surely there must be a way to at least get it to work vertically using the same approach as Tordex Wheel.

Incidentally, anyone else remember the mice with a little slider switch instead of a wheel? Great for vertical scrolling. No idea if they allowed you to middle-click, but most programmers and certainly all Web developers have no idea that the middle button clicks anyway. (Web developers can only count to 2, as they're obsessed with trying to break the right button. Life will only get a whole lot worse if they discover that mice have a third button to hose as well...)

HaaTa · « **Reply #9 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 19:23:33 »

I hate the focus strategy in Windows for the scroll wheel.

For example, if I have two windows open (vim, and opera), I need to "click" the other window just to scroll on it. Whereas Linux (all WMs I've used at least) you don't have to, as the xserver relies on what is under the mouse for sending scroll events. This is even worse if you have a fullscreened window your trying to scroll underneath the window your working on.

Damn, I gotta get my ass in gear (and some free time) and start writing an app to do that in Windows.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #10 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 19:37:05 »

I think the program you want is the one I mentioned in my post, Tordex Wheel ;-)

However, its development is stagnant and perhaps you will succeed in rectifying its two problems. One, it has an utterly pointless tray icon. The other is that it has CPU usage issues -- on my P4 2.8 HT, I have it set to Above Normal priority (via C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c "start /abovenormal C:\Progra~1\Tordex~1\tordex~1.exe") to stop the pseudo-deadlock effect where high CPU usage keeps it off the CPU which then prevents the screen from updating or the cursor from moving, although this tends to act in spurts. One thing it does allow me to do is (with Tab Mix Plus) is switch tab using mousewheel rollover on the tab bar while Flash has stolen the focus again.

I think that even with elevated CPU, If I navigate to C:\ in Explorer, enable the folder pane, hold the cursor over the folder pane and hit numpad *, the whole GUI hangs as Explorer's intense CPU usage and screen redraw virtually deadlocks with Tordex wheel. Until Explorer is done, your PC is hung. I think it took out my music too.

However, I've not really had any serious problems since leaving the CPU priority to Above Normal. On my Core 2 Duo work PC, none of this seems necessary, although I've not tried the abusive Explorer test!

Plus, you might be so kind as to release it as free or even FOSS ;-)

HaaTa · « **Reply #11 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 19:47:51 »

Quote from: Daniel Beardsmore;145138

I think the program you want is the one I mentioned in my post, Tordex Wheel ;-)

However, its development is stagnant and perhaps you will succeed in rectifying its two problems. One, it has an utterly pointless tray icon. The other is that it has CPU usage issues -- on my P4 2.8 HT, I have it set to Above Normal priority (via C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c "start /abovenormal C:\Progra~1\Tordex~1\tordex~1.exe") to stop the pseudo-deadlock effect where high CPU usage keeps it off the CPU which then prevents the screen from updating or the cursor from moving, although this tends to act in spurts. One thing it does allow me to do is (with Tab Mix Plus) is switch tab using mousewheel rollover on the tab bar while Flash has stolen the focus again.

I think that even with elevated CPU, If I navigate to C:\ in Explorer, enable the folder pane, hold the cursor over the folder pane and hit numpad *, the whole GUI hangs as Explorer's intense CPU usage and screen redraw virtually deadlocks with Tordex wheel. Until Explorer is done, your PC is hung. I think it took out my music too.

However, I've not really had any serious problems since leaving the CPU priority to Above Normal. On my Core 2 Duo work PC, none of this seems necessary, although I've not tried the abusive Explorer test!

Very interesting, I'll definitely have to take a closer look at it.

Quote from: Daniel Beardsmore;145138

Plus, you might be so kind as to release it as free or even FOSS ;-)

Always do

. What license do you prefer?

I have a holiday coming up, and nothing planned so far. Maybe I can throw something together.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #12 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 19:56:02 »

Well, I'm settled with Tordex Wheel -- didn't have to pay as you get it for free if you buy True Launch Bar, which is nice as it's highly compatible with UltraMon, and I like my dual taskbars. (However, TLB's multiclipboard is a mess that breaks the clipboard in Pidgin, Excel and often Firefox too.)

FOSS licences are a nightmare -- from what I've read of the GPL so far, it seems far too restrictive for my tastes. The whole idea is to retaliate against restrictive licences. The zlib licence seems to sum up pretty much how I feel -- I truly don't care what you do with anything I write, as long as you don't interfere with what I still plan for it.

HaaTa · « **Reply #13 on:** Thu, 24 December 2009, 21:01:41 »

k, zlib, maybe X11 or New BSD.

Now I need a name for the app/library (most difficult part of a project).

HaaTa · « **Reply #14 on:** Sat, 26 December 2009, 13:27:56 »

Finished it...

It took more time trying to decode msdn than it did for me to write it.
Minus the pain in the ass of msdn, I can't believe anyone would sell something like this. Its too easy.

Once I get some sleep, I'll clean it up, and post source and binary for people to try.

ricercar · « **Reply #15 on:** Sat, 26 December 2009, 13:53:16 »

> Now I need a name

When I designed one of these utils for an early Macintosh OS, I called it OverWindow.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #16 on:** Sat, 26 December 2009, 15:24:45 »

I'll be glad to give it a go.

HaaTa · « **Reply #17 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 02:10:12 »

So here it is.

MHover git
MHover

Sorry for the number of dlls (and their size) but I was feeling really lazy, and didn't want to look at MFC anymore. There's almost no code for the doing the mouse wheel stuff.
If someone wants a better icon, send me one (with compatible licensing).

I noticed 2 bugs already (while packaging the binary):

Some applications bypasses the Mouse Wheel blocking (Windows 7). Namely Task Manager and WinRar.
Some applications do not accept the input messages, I believe this is due to User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI, Vista and higher). I'll have to do some more research on this. Explorer and GIMP currently.

If these problems piss me off at work, I'll be fixing them very promptly (WinXP house).

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #18 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 07:35:46 »

WinXP SP3 here.
The tray icon is blank (program icons is the Windows default), and the tooltip for the tray icon cuts off at "rathe".

The program also appears to do nothing. It won't scroll panels of inactive windows, and it doesn't have any effect in Windows Explorer, where rolling the wheel over the folder tree just scrolls whatever control is focused, exactly as if it were not running. (Explorer was the main reason for even installing it.)

I can't test Firefox as it seems that a Firefox, Tab Mix Plus or Flash upgrade has resolved the bug where you can't switch tab using the mousewheel with a Flash movie focused.

The vast majority of all my software already handles wheel scrolling properly. The only other one that does not, besides Explorer, is FileZilla in the office, as they simply refuse to handle wheel scrolling properly. (I use FlashFXP at home, which was fixed ages ago.)

HaaTa · « **Reply #19 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 08:49:03 »

Yeah, I noticed the Explorer ones. I'm going to test it tomorrow at work and see what I can do with it. The msdn documentation doesn't tell me much.

What I need to do is get the mouse wheel messages before they are sent to Explorer.

I may be able to do a bit more if I use a VC++ compiler instead of mingw as mingw is a bit out of date.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #20 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 09:18:00 »

I presume that the tray icon is only there for testing purposes, for ease of closing it and trying a new build? Since your application maintains a hidden window, you can close the program simply with: taskkill /im:mhover.exe (taskkill is otherwise a complete joke).

No need to clutter the tray with another useless icon ;-)

HaaTa · « **Reply #21 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 09:45:50 »

Sure, I tend to hate tray icons anyways.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #22 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 17:37:42 »

Well, Tordex Wheel doesn't care whether the window is focused or not, so maybe this has some bearing on the problem. It looks like you're only handling the mouse for the active window.

(Does Microsoft have a term for a window that's actually ... you know, the thing that you as a user call a window, including top-level windows, dialogs, splash screens, etc, but not "window" as in the API definition, that includes controls?)

HaaTa · « **Reply #23 on:** Sun, 27 December 2009, 22:21:38 »

Quote from: Daniel Beardsmore;145727

Well, Tordex Wheel doesn't care whether the window is focused or not, so maybe this has some bearing on the problem. It looks like you're only handling the mouse for the active window.

Not quite, I'm using a hook to take in all Mouse events regardless of where they are sent. Then I attempt to block the event from being sent any further down the Window stack. Then send it to the Window under the cursor.

Quote from: Daniel Beardsmore;145727

(Does Microsoft have a term for a window that's actually ... you know, the thing that you as a user call a window, including top-level windows, dialogs, splash screens, etc, but not "window" as in the API definition, that includes controls?)

Windows... To me they are all HWND references.

I just rewrote the most of the hook setup (now much more complicated, and global in WinXP). Had to make a dll (sheesh, the hoops Windows makes you jump through), now the code looks more complicated (but isn't).

I also removed all of the Qt (to lazy to set it up at work), so no more GUI.

As a bonus its already working with Explorer. Now I just have to figure out how to fix the Task Manager bug.

HaaTa · « **Reply #24 on:** Mon, 28 December 2009, 00:17:39 »

Here's the newest version.

MHover-0.2

I'll update the source when I get home. ssh access is a pain at work.
So far I've noticed no bugs in WinXP, I'll have to test Windows 7 later.

Lenny_Nero · « **Reply #25 on:** Tue, 19 January 2010, 08:23:33 »

I posted about http://pitaschio.ara3.net/ before.
It allows any screen the mouse is above to be scrolled like the above, as well as so many other things that should have been part of windows from the start.

Small clip from http://pitaschio.ara3.net/manual.htm..

Explanation of functions (mouse shortcut)

You can assign various operations to the combinations of mouse action such as "Ctrl+double-click on the desktop" or "Shift + right-click on the titlebar". The default operations are as follows:

* Run Screen Saver
* Show Desktop
* Run Task Manager
* Show Display Properties Dialog
* Show System Properties Dialog
* Show Adjust Date/Time Dialog
* Show My Computer
* Show My Network
* Show My Documents
* Show Recycle Bin
* Show Control Panel
* Safely Remove Hardwares
* Change Virtual Desktop
* Shut Down the Monitor
* Move to Stand by Mode
* Move to Hibernation Mode
* Log Off
* Restart the Computer
* Turn Off the Computer
* Make Topmost Window
* Make Non-Topmost Window
* Toggle Topmost State
* Place at the Bottom of the Z-order
* Close Window
* Minimize Window
* Move Window to Center of Screen
* Roll Up/Down
* Transparency
* Minimize to System Tray

In addition, you can assign any command to mouse actions by writing command directory to edit boxes in the mouse shortcut setting dialogue.

Explanation of functions (explorer)
Parent folder by double click

By double clicking on blank space of explorer window, you can move to the parent folder.
Extended file rename

When you start renaming of a file, only the file name is selected instead of selecting the file name and extension. You can select extension or entire file name by pressing F2 key. Moreover, you can edit the file name of next file or previous file by using down or up key.

nanu · « **Reply #26 on:** Tue, 19 January 2010, 08:51:21 »

I missed this wheel-without-focus discussion due to my ignoring this thread topic. I use katmouse.
Oh, may as well plug other related utilities: allSnap, winroll.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #27 on:** Tue, 19 January 2010, 18:41:52 »

I remember trying WinRoll some time ago, but threw it out as it prevented me from bringing up a window's context menu by right-clicking the title bar.

Pitaschio looks pretty cool, and doesn't seem to suffer the same performance issues as Tordex Wheel (no need to elevate priority on my P4 2.

. I'm hitting against a wall though -- VirtuaWin uses middle click on title bar for window menu, but at the same time, I want that for roll-up. Or I could use title bar double click, like old my Mac (bless) but then I'd lose maximise. If Pitaschio supported that one. Too many actions, too few assigments given that I want to use mouse only, no need to reach for the keyboard (if I'm eating, on the phone, whatever).

Minimise to tray I get through Power Menu right now via an additional context menu item in the title bar, but it messes up on anything Delphi or wxWidgets (can't read the window's icon, goes with a default) -- this all works fine in Pitaschio. Pitaschio also does roll-up far better than other tools I've tried.

What would own, would be a mouse equivalent to AutoHotkey. While it's bound to be possible to use AutoHotkey for this anyway, I can't use anything GUI-based to create my own bindings: title bar double click, close button right click, title bar button 5 click.

The AutoHotkey docs don't immediately indicate a way to read off what part of a window was clicked on, not in terms of title bar.

Looks like I'll be trying Pitaschio for the time being, thanks!

PS Still awaiting the Keyboard Co getting those UK FILCOs in stock

Computer-Lab in Basement · « **Reply #28 on:** Tue, 19 January 2010, 18:48:28 »

I need to clean my mice one of these days. They haven't been cleaned in a while.

HaaTa · « **Reply #29 on:** Tue, 19 January 2010, 20:03:00 »

Ahh, success, got a linux box running for work No more mouse issues for me

. Its nice to boot up and find out your only using 58 MB of ram.

Yeah, I found katmouse a couple of weeks ago when I was doing more research.

The problem I noticed with firefox is that I think it receives the mouse wheel events by another method (Qt and GTK apps have the same problem). But all of them have very large code bases, its going to take some effort to find out how to fix it. And now that I'm minimally using Windows again its kinda on the back burner.

microsoft windows · « **Reply #30 on:** Wed, 20 January 2010, 17:47:47 »

Quote from: HaaTa;152212

Its nice to boot up and find out your only using 58 MB of ram.

That's why I like Windows 2000 so much. I started up just the other day with 62MB of RAM being used at idle.

Daniel Beardsmore · « **Reply #31 on:** Wed, 20 January 2010, 18:54:41 »

Oo ... StrokeIt: global mouse gestures for Windows. Now this, I like.

Leaves only one thing left to find: a way to bring up alt-tab from the keyboard and pick off apps with the mouse. I tried binding a gesture to press alt-tab and leave the alt key down, and now I've got the alt-tab window permanently stuck on the screen even after switching tasks with alt-tab.

DOH!!!

HaaTa · « **Reply #32 on:** Wed, 20 January 2010, 23:24:59 »

Quote from: Daniel Beardsmore;152507

Oo ... StrokeIt: global mouse gestures for Windows. Now this, I like.

Leaves only one thing left to find: a way to bring up alt-tab from the keyboard and pick off apps with the mouse. I tried binding a gesture to press alt-tab and leave the alt key down, and now I've got the alt-tab window permanently stuck on the screen even after switching tasks with alt-tab.

DOH!!!

Haha, global mouse gestures sounds neat (I use the built-in mouse gestures for Opera all the time). But considering everything else I do on a computer is with a keyboard, it doesn't really make that much sense for me. coreutils makes the best file manager

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Author Topic: Reminder: Clean your mouse occasionally... (Read 7268 times)