Can Your Wind0ze-based PC Do THIS?! (#2)

For those of us that use a notebook, not holding a bar of soap and mousing around is something that few people get used to, especially if said notebook resides permanently at one’s desk. It’s like that innate need for a gundog (labrador, daschund, etc.) to always have something in its mouth.

But what if you have to wing-it with just your humble trackpad? How do you accomplish things like scrolling? On the PC side of things, an implementation has arisen by assigning the far-right hand corner of the surface to always scroll. Apple later came up with the idea of using two fingers to accomplish the same thing. Why? If you’ve used a PC’s trackpad for any length of time, you’ll encounter the scroll-area when simply dragging stuff across the surface of the ‘pad. Very bad UE. Apple solved this problem by forcing you to let the trackpad know you want to scroll. Simple, effective, and it works. Insanely great.

“But your Mac doesn’t even have a second mouse button!”

That’s true. But since when did Apple ever include something that wasn’t needed in its designs? You don’t need the RMB, because you can tell your computer to interpret a tap with two fingers as a RMB-click.

Still waiting for Windows to implement the same thing. (Guess we’ll see some sort improvement to scrolling when Windows 7 comes around, although considering prior experience with Vista, Windows 7 won’t be here for another 3 years. Give or take. Maybe even 5.)