centre button scrolling

[Paul Unger]

Can anyone explain the difference between the varieties of centre button scrolling on the T42? I've got three flavours: standard, smooth, and auto-select. Standard--when activated--has an icon with a rectangle that has arrows top and bottom with the mouse pointer pointing at it. It moves up and down and side to side; fairly 'standard', as the name suggests It's "Smooth" that gets me . . . It has a 'compass rose' type icon--arrows in four directions in a circle--and definitely feels more 'smooth', but has some funky features. The most troubling is the 'variable speed' feature--the further you get from the icon with the pointer, the faster it goes. That's fine, if you're in the middle of the page, but if you start close to the bottom of a page and want to go down . . . well, I can hear my beard grow for all the speed it makes I don't want to have to "plan" my scrolling activities, e.g., "Ok, I want to scroll down so I'd better position my mouse at the top of the page so that it won't take forever to go down." The last flavour, "Auto-select", remains a complete mystery.

What's behind my question is that only "Smooth" works in the OpenOffice family of programs. I got an answer regarding this earlier (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... +scrolling), but it doesn't work with all the centre button scrolling options . . . Does anyone know how to get "Standard" to work in all programs? Thanks for your help!

[davidspalding]

Smooth is the Microsoft one ... works in Office, IE ... well, I use the term "works" loosely, I've NEVER liked it. If you don't program a middle button/scrollwheel function on an Intellimouse, it's the same thing. You can click and hold the button, and it goes away when you release, or you can click-release, and it stays active until you click again.

Auto ... seems to use the IBM standard unless the Microsoft one is available. My disdain for Auto is that ... I can't reasonably predict which will appear when/where. Considering what I mentioned above, it can have an impact on how you use the Ultranav blue button.

So ... I stick with Standard (IBM's scroll). For one, like I think you mention, it just plain "works" ... "better."

[Paul Unger]

Thanks for the explanation, davidspalding. That certainly helps my understanding of the options (except for the mysterious 'auto' . . . ) Once again, it seems that Microsoft is trying to do too much. Which brings me back to my original question (rather roundaboutly): is there any way to get Standard to work in OpenOffice?