Slashdot Mirror
Two-Finger Scrolling For Older Mac Laptops
Michael Stroeck writes "Want that nifty scrolling on your portable but have an older one? No problem, Daniel Becker has written a free alternative driver for older PowerBooks and iBooks that works like a charm. It is based on Apple's AppleADBMouse-209.0.10 driver from Mac OS 10.3.7 that is available as part of the publicly released Darwin source code. As such, the driver is covered by the APSL (Apple Public Source License)."
Works great on my 12" 1GHz PB. I think this is going to be a keeper.
For those that didn't RTFA, it's any machine with one of the new 'W Enhanced' touchpads. As far as I can tell from personal experience, all iBook G4s have it, and a variety of AlBooks as well. My friend's AlBook that is a bit over 18 months old doesn't have it, but I suspect his younger sister's does, as her PB is younger than my iBook, which does. It works like a champ. It replaced SideTrack for me. I'd recommend the one that is XY only, as the rotational thing doesn't seem all that useful and just made the XY scrolling jumpy.
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
One finger: Alt
The other finger: Down-arrow
Who needs extra software?
Yesterday the page was down. I don't know, if it was because of slashdotting or due other reasons, but just to be safe a mirror of the source code:
./AppleADBMouse.kext /System/Library/Extensions/AppleADBMouse.kext && sudo kextload ./AppleADBMouse.kext
.kexts in above procedure), or until the next system restart occurs.
.kext in place of /System/Library/Extensions/AppleADBMouse.kext.
Download
And here's TFA:
Two-Finger-Scrolling with pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks
What's this all about?
This is a hack to activate two-finger scrolling on supported pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks (i.e. those with a "W-Enhanced" trackpad, including most AlBooks and recent iBooks) on OS X 10.3 (tested on 10.3.7 and 10.3.8).
It is based on Apple's AppleADBMouse-209.0.10 driver from 10.3.7 that is available as part of the publicly released Darwin source code. As such, the driver is covered by the APSL.
Modified by Daniel Becker, Feb. 2005.
How do I scroll, then?
To enable scrolling mode, just place two fingers on your trackpad instead of one. Both fingers need to be placed next to each other horizontally (not vertically). Some people get better results with their finger spaced a little bit apart, while others prefer having the fingers right next to each other.
The hack enables three scrolling modes: Vertical, horizontal and circular.
For vertical and horizontal scrolling, move the two fingers up/down or left/right in a straight line, respectively, top scroll in that direction.
Circular scrolling works similar to the iPod's scroll wheel: Move the two fingers in a circle to scroll up or down, depending on whether you move in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
Scrolling seems to be a little jumpy sometimes, what's up with that?
This usually happens when the driver mixes up X/Y and rotational scrolling. Enabling just one of the two at a time should help.
Also, several people suggested they get better results if they disable "Use smooth scrolling" under "Appearance" in System Preferences.
Can my trackpad do this?
To check if your trackpad can support two-finger scrolling, use the following command:
ioreg -l | grep "W Enhanced Trackpad"
If this prints out a line containing "W Enhanced Trackpad" = 1 on the right, your trackpad is "W-Enhanced" (and can thus be used for two-finger scrolling); if it doesn't print out anything at all, it's not.
Please note that this check will not work if you have SideTrack installed. SideTrack loads its own mouse driver, which doesn't publish the "W Enhanced" property.
So where's the download?
AppleADBMouse.zip (source, ~73k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_ALL.zip (binary, all scroll modes enabled, ~68k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_XY.zip (binary, only X/Y scrolling, ~67k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_ROT.zip (binary, only circular scrolling, ~68k)
OK, so how do I install this driver thing?
To install from source, open the project file in Xcode and build it, then open the terminal, go to the "build" directory inside the project folder and do this:
sudo chown -R root:wheel
sudo kextunload
And that should be it. The driver stays loaded either until you manually unload it (just reverse the paths to the
If you have SideTrack installed, you'll need to specify its
WARNING: In case the driver should for any reason fail to load, do not touch the trackpad before you have reloaded the original driver or your machine will crash! It's OK to use the keyboard, though.
If you prefer to just install one of the precompiled binaries, just unzip the downloaded archive, open a Terminal, go to the directory you just unzipped to and use the same commands given above.
In case you'd like to install the modified driver permanently, the e
It is also within your iBook's power to run an additional monitor without mirroring the display. Again, there are openfirmware hacks to change this behavior. It is commonly thought that apple cripples functionality in order to differentiate between the pro and consumer lines of their products.
Here's a useful trick that works on every trackpad I've tried, Apple or Windows:
For getting the cursor all the way to the other side of the screen (say, from right to left, for a right-handed person): put your middle finger on the right side of the trackpad; then put your index finger on the left side; then remove the middle finger.
Because the track pad only recognizes one point of contact, it interprets this as your finger moving "really fast," and moves the cursor all the way to the other side.
Pete Forsyth
I ran a few tests.
1. I configured the source to build for only XY support.
2. I ensured that my newly built driver and the preconfigured driver each had appropriate permissions. (root:wheel).
3. I wrote a script which unloaded the system version of the driver and loaded either the prebuilt or the newly compiled driver based on an argument.
results:
Each time, the prebuilt dirver would panic the host and require a hard reboot. Note that this was immediate, and did not require me to touch the trackpad to trigger the failure.
Conclusion, since 10.3.8 was so recently released the developer probably did not know to rebuild the pre-compiled distributions.
If you have already installed it, and are running 10.3.7, you may be at risk when upgrade to 10.3.8. Either upgrade from source now, or revert to the stock driver and wait for new binary packages.
The freshly built driver appears to work as advertised.
Test system:
1 GHz Aluminum 17" powerbook with 1GB memory.
OS, stock 10.3.8 with no third party drivers installed.
Did you touch the touchpad? I noticed it will crash if I bump it during the unloading of the old ktext and loading of the new one.
Also it works but but my fingers must be funny. Since I have to spread my fingers a bit to get it to work. Very unnatural feel.
Usually referred to as 'dual USB'. For a complete reference on Apple's crazy naming conventions, you can't go wrong with Apple History
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
firefox, by default, interprets horizontal scrolling as the forward/back buttons. this is very annoying with two-finger scroll, as it will jump pages without warning. after trial and error i figured out how to disable this:
in firefox go to about:config (type it in address field)
change mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
change mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines to 1