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SideTrack Questions and Answers (FAQ) |
- What MacBook, PowerBook, and iBook models are supported?
- Is this a hack?
- How do I uninstall SideTrack?
- Does SideTrack support two-finger scrolling on older PowerBooks and iBooks (pre-2005 models)?
- Does SideTrack support two-finger scrolling on MacBooks and late-model PowerBooks and iBooks (2005 and later)?
- I'm having trouble getting scrolling or corner taps to work reliably, what can I do?
- After installing SideTrack my cursor sometimes gets "stuck". How can this be prevented?
- How can I use SideTrack to control Mac OS X's Exposé features?
- What possible uses are there for SideTrack's corner tap emulation of mouse button 3 through 6?
- Can I use MouseZoom with SideTrack?
- What acceleration curves are offered by SideTrack?
- Why does SideTrack not work in some applications? Why does horizontal scroll not work for some applications?
- How can I use SideTrack's main tap gesture as middle click (paste) in X11?
- What is SideTrack's relationship to uControl?
A: SideTrack supports most Apple laptops with built-in ADB or USB trackpads. This includes all G3/G4 PowerBooks and iBooks capable of running Mac OS X. It also includes all MacBook models and all pre-2008 MacBook Pro models.
MacBook Air and 2008 MacBook Pros with the "multitouch" trackpad are not presently supported. Note that this only applies to the latest "multitouch" pads. Earlier MacBook and MacBook Pro models, including those with Apple scroll gesture support, are supported.
Support for the 2008 Apple trackpad hardware is being investigated, watch the News page for an announcement.
A: No. SideTrack is simply another driver for the trackpad. It uses the standard kernel interface for mouse drivers. This is exactly the same interface used by all third party mice.
A: SideTrack can be removed from your system using the "Uninstall" button of the SideTrack installer application.
A manual uninstall process is also available, see the SideTrack Read Me for details.
A: In order to support two-finger scrolling the trackpad hardware must support detecting two fingers on the trackpad. Some pre-2005 PowerBooks have this capability (W-Enhanced mode); however, they do not allow two-finger detection while operating in absolute tracking mode. SideTrack requires absolute tracking for features like corner tap actions and custom tap filtering. Since SideTrack cannot use two-finger detection on these trackpads without breaking other major features, SideTrack does not support two-finger scrolling on these models.
A: Two-finger scrolling is a feature of the Apple driver for the USB trackpad hardware found in Apple laptops manufactured after 2005. Installing SideTrack will override the Apple driver and switch the trackpad to SideTrack's features. Support for two-finger scrolling on USB trackpads is being investigated and may appear in a future SideTrack release.
A: SideTrack's scroll and corner tap areas are calculated based on the calibration values for your trackpad. Poor response for these features usually indicates that you need to redo your calibration.
When calibrating pay special attention to the pressure and angle of your finger on the trackpad. You should hold your finger at the same angle you use during normal usage and exert normal finger pressure. Both angle and pressure affect the trackpad response and you want your calibration to reflect your normal usage.
If re-calibrating normally still doesn't correct the issue you may want to "under-calibrate" your pad. Some trackpads exhibit dead areas or nonlinear response around the edges of the surface, especially in the corners. To compensate for this you can perform the calibration by tracing just inside the edge of the trackpad (about 1/8 inch inside). Pay particular attention not to trace too far into the corners, as these are the most common trouble areas. For some users this method of calibration dramatically improves accuracy.
A: In most cases "stuck" cursors are the result of users unintentionally starting mouse motions in the scroll zone area. This appears to be a "stuck" cursor because the driver is trying to scroll instead of move the mouse pointer. Most users adjust to this over time and avoid starting mouse motions in the scroll zones.
It can be helpful to change the scroll area to be smaller, the default scroll area is fairly large so that it is obvious for first-time users. Over time as you get used to SideTrack it can be helpful to reduce the scroll area size. Most users can find a scroll zone size setting where the "stuck" cursor problem no longer occurs.
A: SideTrack can control Exposé using its corner tap functionality. You can use corner taps to generate mouse clicks for mouse buttons 3 through 6. These extra mouse buttons can be mapped to Exposé controls in Panther's Exposé preference pane.
Alternately you can use SideTrack corner tap keystroke emulation to generate the Exposé control keystrokes (typically F9, F10 and F11).
A: Mac OS X has no standard functionality attached to mouse buttons 3 through 6. Some applications may offer other extended functionality for some or all of these buttons. For example, the Safari, Camino, OmniWeb and Firefox browsers all use mouse button 3 to open a link in a new tab or window. Similarly, X Windows applications running in Apple's X11 implementation use mouse button 3 for "middle-click" which has special meaning to some X Windows applications.
If your applications do not support extended mouse buttons consider using the corner taps to control Exposé (see above).
A: SideTrack is completely compatible with MouseZoom. You can use MouseZoom's trackpad speed controls to adjust pointer acceleration for SideTrack.
Dramatically increasing your trackpad speed/acceleration with MouseZoom may result in an overly "steep" acceleration that prevents fine pointer control. If you experience a problem with control while using an extremely high MouseZoom speed setting consider reducing your MouseZoom speed and using a different SideTrack acceleration setting such as "Redmond switcher".
A: SideTrack offers three acceleration curves:
- Mac OS X trackpad acceleration - This is the standard acceleration curve used by the Apple trackpad driver.
- Mac OS X mouse acceleration - This is Apple's standard acceleration for mouse devices. For most users this will feel "faster" than the standard trackpad acceleration.
- Redmond switcher acceleration - This acceleration mimics pointer ballistics on the most recent operating system release from Redmond Washington. For most users this will feel "faster" than the standard acceleration with a noticeably more linear acceleration.
A: SideTrack works by emulating a scroll wheel mouse. It sends scroll wheel events to the operating system and the OS routes those events to applications.
Unfortunately, not all applications respond to scroll events properly. Most Mac OS X applications understand vertical scroll wheel events. Generally in order for vertical scrolling to work the mouse pointer must be within the scrollable area of the window you wish to scroll (not inside the scrollbar, just anywhere within the scrollable section of the window).
Horizontal scroll wheel event support is much less common. While most Apple applications support horizontal scroll events, many third party applications do not properly handle horizontal scroll.
Ultimately it is up to the application author to provide support for scroll events, SideTrack can do nothing about the limitations of applications which do not support scroll wheel information.
A: SideTrack supports assigning middle click to any of the four trackpad corners. However some X11 users prefer to have the mouse middle click mapped to the main trackpad tap to allow for quick paste operations.
To accomplish this you need to first set SideTrack to use the main tap gesture as mouse button 2 (right click). Then quit X11.app, terminating any X11 programs you have running. Next run the following Terminal commands:
echo 'pointer = 1 3 2 4 5' >> ~/.Xmodmap
defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button2 Command
defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button3 Option
The first command forces X11 to remap mouse 2 to mouse 3. The other two commands then correct problems with the remapping when using the Command and Option keys. Note that these commands assume you are not using custom X11 startup scripts like .xsession or .xinitrc. Users with custom startup scripts will need to add the following command to their scripts:
xmodmap -e 'pointer = 1 3 2 4 5'
If you still wish to have right click available in X11 you can map a corner in SideTrack to be mouse button 3. After the remapping commands X11 will treat the mouse 3 corner as mouse 2.
Thanks to Mike Sliczniak for providing these instructions.
A: In an effort to bring scrolling features to Mac OS X I originally contributed the scroll emulation feature for Shane Celis's excellent uControl utility. However, because of technical limitations, uControl requires a modifier key be held down to enable scroll emulation. Since uControl's scroll emulation was released many people have contact both myself and Shane requesting "keyless" scrolling familiar to the Wintel laptop world.
Although I originally believed this feature was impossible, thanks to the resourcefulness of Heiko Hellweg, a method was found to switch the trackpad hardware to the needed mode. SideTrack uses that mode to bring keyless scrolling to Mac OS X.
SideTrack is separate from uControl because it operates at a different level than uControl within the kernel. SideTrack is 100% compatible with uControl, but does not require uControl for operation.
