Mouse wheel support in DataEase for Windows.

For some reason Mouse Wheel does not work in Userview in DataEase for Windows. It might not be a big surprise, as the framework and core technology of DFW pre-dates Windows itself.

But, this is something we all have become used to using to scroll up and down pages, and when you try to do this in DFW, you get nothing.

As part of our new "drive" to increase user satisfaction with our LegEasy products, we have looked into this and we have come up with a "quick fix".

The fix is called "Katmouse" and is a free-ware product that you can download and install on your computer. This is a third party software and has nothing to do with DataEase, but as far as we can tell it works fine and you get the added benefit of the "mouse wheel" being immediately activated as long as your mouse courser is inside the window/application that you want to use. Standard functionality in Windows is that you have to click and activate that window. Have a look and a go!

KatMouse

Purpose

The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefullness of the mouse wheel.

Another feature involves the wheel button. Since the wheel button is not consistently used in Windows, KatMouse can use it for a kind of task switching: with a click of the wheel button you can push a window to the buttom of the stack of windows that is your desktop, making a recovered window the active window.

System Requirements

Since KatMouse uses functionality only available on the NT line of Microsoft operating systems, KatMouse will run on NT(SP3+), Windows 2000, XP and Vista, but not 9x and ME.

Installation

Run KatMouseInst.exe and choose the destination directory.

Usage

For one thing, you can scroll with the wheel button :-). If your using KatMouse wheel button functionality, you can scroll most windows page wise by holding the wheel button over the window and clicking the left (up) or right (down) mouse button. If you hold the left or right mouse button, you'll get continuous, accelerating pagewise scrolling.

To push a window to the stack bottom, just click with the wheel button on the window (double click on 'always on top' windows). This works even while dragging something with the mouse (i.e. copying files from one explorer to another). You can change the push button to be one the extended buttons of newer 5-button mice. To raise that window again, click and hold the wheel button on it for some time. This will raise the window to the top, but will not trigger any other action (i.e. clicking with the left mouse button on a window just to raise it again could click a button/link or move the cursor or other unintended things). See this screen shot for available options.

In the KatMouse properties dialog (available by right clicking on the KatMouse tray icon and clicking Settings ) you can choose individual wheel scroll settings for applications and windows. In the Applications tab, choose the applications executable file in the file dialog and set the desired scroll width by double clicking on the new entry in the list (screen shot ). After that all windows of this application will not scroll with the default scroll width, but with the individualized settings you made.

The same applies to the Classes tab: Here you can select the kind of window (its class) to customize (drag the crosshair to the window). If the chosen window does not behave correctly you can disable the 'Window has wheel scrolling support' checkbox in its settings dialog. This will force KatMouse to use a different, possibly less efficient approach to scrolling the window. Try this if KatMouse does not properly scroll a window. On the other hand, enable the checkbox if scrolling is slow.

Download it here! Visit home page and read more here!

Published: 20/10/11 - 10:03:03 (Ulrik Jacob Høegh - Krohn)

Last changed: 21/12/11 - 12:24:44 (Katia Robinson)