After a failure during an upgrade, I have finally decided to restart my blog a few days ago. So, the first thing I did was go over some of the more important posts I had from a few years ago to see if I need to reblog it and it seems this topic is one that needs to reblogged. I performed a quick Google search and found nothing in the entire internet that would suggest a different solution. So here is an updated version of an old post, completely rewritten and revised.
OS X mouse experience on a Microsoft Windows machine
As a user of multiple Operating systems, when I noticess something that is more natural or easier to use on an OS, I will pick it up and attempt to replicate it across the different platforms of my daily uses. One of the key changes I picked up and quickly adapted to is the reverse scrolling on the mouse introduced in the OS X Lion release from a few years ago. Initially it was troublesome on the Mac, especially with the years of scrolling magically revered within seconds of update. However, as a Apple tech friend of mine said, give it some time. I took the challenge and realized how naturally it really was. Reverse scrolling actually made more logical sense! Worst part is, it only took me a week to change my mind completely and within weeks after the usage change, I found it more diffcult when I am not using a Mac. Being the person I am, I naturally look for ways to make the input experience identical and it seems the scrolling on a Windows machine is not as easily configurable as I initially thought.
The basic Windows Mouse properties on the scroll only allows the user to configure the number of lines scrolled but not the direction of the scroll.
The number of lines at a time is also starting at 1, if it would allow a negative number, it would have been perfect, but it must be a positive number. The screenshot above from my Windows 7 machine indicates scrolling down would move the page down 3 lines and scrolling up would move the page up 3 lines. However, what I wanted was the reverse of this and I am forced to put my software engineering skills to use for personal reason… Do I need to write a program that intercepts the scroll and reverse it for me or is there one already written. Guess what? There is one already written!
This program is called X-Mouse button Control, it allows the user to customize how the mouse reacts and putting on my reverse engineering cap, it does what I was planning to write plus more! There is a very detail user guide available in PDF format. Feel free to see what else you can use this for, my goal to use this is very simple, I just want to reverse my scroll wheel. 🙂
To set it up is also pretty easy, all you have to do is download the software, install it, and switch some settings around! Here are the steps if you need it.
- Once you have downloaded the latest version of the program and installed it. check your task bar for this little icon.
- Doing a secondary click (Right click for most users) would produce a pop-up menu.
- Click on Setup and the main setup window will appear.
- Look for the Wheel Up and Wheel down area, this is where we want to focus.
- Click on the Drop down box and look for Mouse Wheel Down in the Wheel up drop down and Mouse Wheel Up in the Wheel Down drop down.
- Hit the Apply button follow by the Close button and you are done! Your mouse scroll is now revered on a Windows Machine!