I recently discovered that Safari supports simple drag navigation around large pages rather line Photoshop's space-drag functionality: by simply holding ctrl and moving the mouse (not dragging -- the mouse button remains up), the cursor changes to a hand which grabs and drags the page. Perhaps I'm really late to the game on this one, but I'm totally hooked.
I've been finding, however, that I'm so attached to this mode of navigation when reading in Safari that I'm constantly subconsciously trying to do it in all sorts of other apps. I personally think this would be a fantastic way to browse text in TextMate. Like all good programmers, I'm of course completely attached to the keyboard when actively developing, but there are many times when trying to figure out some code or reading a README is much more like browsing than active development, and in these situations I'd really love to have this sort of interface. It's particularly great for trackpad (or wacom tablet) use.
Far from super-high priority, but at least worth a brief thought, as it's probably not the most challenging bit of polish to add. -jrk
On 08/07/2005, at 23.54, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley wrote:
I recently discovered that Safari supports simple drag navigation around large pages rather [...] by simply holding ctrl and moving the mouse
Control brings up a context menu here. Tried all other modifiers as well. Sure this isn't a 3rd party extension?
I've been finding, however, that I'm so attached to this mode of navigation when reading in Safari that I'm constantly subconsciously trying to do it in all sorts of other apps.
Tell me about it, under Panther I was using uControl which gave a virtual scroll wheel (by holding down ctrl-option and moving the mouse), unfortunately that kernel-ext. broke with the release of Tiger, and it took a long time to get rid of the habbit, especially since uControl also simulated a horizontal scroll wheel (which turns out to be much more useful than vertical scrolling, since many applications neglect to map keys to horizontal scrolling).
[...] It's particularly great for trackpad (or wacom tablet) use.
As for trackpad, doesn't Apple support scroll wheel simulation when using both fingers on the trackpad and moving these up/down (I think it needs to be enabled, don't have a trackpad myself)?
Far from super-high priority, but at least worth a brief thought, as it's probably not the most challenging bit of polish to add.
I'd prefer it as a system-wide patch (was hoping that uControl could got updated to Tiger).
Personally though, I scroll using cmd-option-ctrl cursor keys in TextMate (which scroll the buffer w/o moving the caret). Of course conformance between apps would be desired.
I have this in my DefaultKeybinding.dict [1]:
"^~@\UF700" = "scrollLineUp:"; "^~@\UF701" = "scrollLineDown:"; "^~@\UF702" = "scrollColumnLeft:"; "^~@\UF703" = "scrollColumnRight:";
So it also works in Mail etc.
[1] http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2005/07/05/key-bindings-for- switchers/
On 7/10/05, Allan Odgaard allan@macromates.com wrote:
[...] It's particularly great for trackpad (or wacom tablet) use.
As for trackpad, doesn't Apple support scroll wheel simulation when using both fingers on the trackpad and moving these up/down (I think it needs to be enabled, don't have a trackpad myself)?
I have a recent 12" PB and its trackpad supports two finger drag scrolling out of the box. I love it. I usually hate trackpads with a passion but this thing works so well I don't even bother with a mouse when I'm using the PB on a desk.
M
On 10-07-2005 19:14, Matt Mower wrote:
On 7/10/05, Allan Odgaard allan@macromates.com wrote:
[...] It's particularly great for trackpad (or wacom tablet) use.
As for trackpad, doesn't Apple support scroll wheel simulation when using both fingers on the trackpad and moving these up/down (I think it needs to be enabled, don't have a trackpad myself)?
I have a recent 12" PB and its trackpad supports two finger drag scrolling out of the box. I love it. I usually hate trackpads with a passion but this thing works so well I don't even bother with a mouse when I'm using the PB on a desk.
Most alu powerbooks that were made in the past few years support it as well, with a third party driver. See: iScroll2 http://www-users.kawo2.rwth-aachen.de/~razzfazz/
I've been using that for the past few months (works both on Panther and Tiger) and I love it, I can't shake off the habit when I work on my girlfriends ibook ;) What I also prefer above uControl is that you can also assign right-click to two-fingers on pad and click (and the fact that it's (nag)free)
And although it's possible to have horizontal scrolling enabled (or even circular scrolling) I don't use it, because it's a bit hard to really move vertical/horizontal with two fingers.
Jeroen.
Control brings up a context menu here. Tried all other modifiers as well. Sure this isn't a 3rd party extension?
Turns out it's Saft's "Control-Drag" option. And it's not ctrl-click -- it's just ctrl+mouse movement (with no mouse buttons down) -- so it doesn't conflict with context menus.
Tell me about it, under Panther I was using uControl which gave a virtual scroll wheel (by holding down ctrl-option and moving the mouse), unfortunately that kernel-ext. broke with the release of Tiger, and it took a long time to get rid of the habbit, especially since uControl also simulated a horizontal scroll wheel (which turns out to be much more useful than vertical scrolling, since many applications neglect to map keys to horizontal scrolling).
As for trackpad, doesn't Apple support scroll wheel simulation when using both fingers on the trackpad and moving these up/down (I think it needs to be enabled, don't have a trackpad myself)?
So the key here is that it's not the same as a scroll wheel -- simulated or otherwise. For starters, it moves in both axes simultaneously (while scroll wheel simulation on the new PBs only work on one axis at a time). But much more critically, it:
1. Moves in the *opposite* directly 2. Moves exactly one-to-one with the mouse movement
Open an Adobe app (or even Preview) and use the Hand tool. Any remotely serious Photoshop user no doubt uses this tool all the time, without thinking -- hold space, drag somewhere else, release. Same thing in Saft, with the sole exception that the mouse button remains up.
I'd prefer it as a system-wide patch (was hoping that uControl could got updated to Tiger).
No doubt -- that would be awesome. However, I fear that by nature of not quite being the same as scroll-wheel simulation it might require code injection for system-wide modification of various scroll-area methods to really nail, and even that probably wouldn't work totally consistently in variously customized scroll areas. I'd love to see someone try, though.
Anyway, like I said, it was just an idea that struck me when using Safari recently. The exact Photoshop/Saft-style implementation may not be perfect, but seems like something with which it would at least be worth experimenting, as I expect it would take next to no effort to modify your text area widget to emulate this exact behavior. -jrk
On 12-07-2005 00:41, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley wrote:
So the key here is that it's not the same as a scroll wheel -- simulated or otherwise. For starters, it moves in both axes simultaneously (while scroll wheel simulation on the new PBs only work on one axis at a time).
This is not true when using iScroll2 as mentioned above. I had horizontal scrolling turned on at first, but turned it off in the end, because it was causing me too much trouble because of the simultaneous movement.
But much more critically, it:
- Moves in the *opposite* directly
- Moves exactly one-to-one with the mouse movement
Again, this is not true when using iScroll2. You can configure the scrolling speed, it reacts instantly and works system-wide... Only problem is, it only works for Aluminium PowerBooks..
Jeroen.
All I can say is that it's worth trying the Saft option to get a feel for it first-hand. It's a matter of the subtle tactile experience -- and the fact that it works on any Mac.
It's not necessarily the end-all feature addition for TextMate, I just thought it worthy of consideration. And it really is different than 2-finger scrolling. My primary Mac is a 15" PB 1.67 -- I know what 2-finger scrolling feels like, and it is a different experience as it currently stands.
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Allan Odgaard -
Jeroen van der Ham -
Jonathan Ragan-Kelley -
Matt Mower