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TUAW Tip: Four Fun Scroll Wheel tips

by Erica Sadun May 8th 2007 at 8:00PM

Sure you can use your scroll wheel mouse (or track pad) to scroll up and down your OS X windows but why limit yourself? Here's a quick list of TUAW's favorite scroll wheel tricks:

1. Zoom your screen. Hold down the Control key while scrolling up on your mouse (or performing a dual-finger up drag on your trackpad). Your entire screen zooms in. Control-scroll (or drag) down to zoom out.

2. Scroll through your Apps Press and hold the Command key then press and release Tab to display your active Applications. Scroll through your applications left (scrolling up) and right (scrolling down). When an Application is selected, you can move your hand from the scroll button on your mouse to the keyboard to press "H" to hide the application or "Q" to quit it. Release the Command key to switch to the selected application.

3. Scroll horizontally. In applications with both vertical and horizontal sliders such as, say, Preview, press Shift while scrolling to scroll horizontally instead of vertically.

4. Open pages in new tabs in Safari. Instead of right-clicking a link and selecting "Open in New Tab", just scroll-button-click a link instead. If you have enabled tabbed viewing in Safari (Preferences -> Tabs -> Enable Tabbed Browsing), your link opens in a new tab.

Thanks, Fritz Laurel.



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Sure you can use your scroll wheel mouse (or track pad) to scroll up and down your OS X windows but why limit yourself? Here's a quick list...
 

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14 Comments

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Flanagan

Also in Camino browsers, holding down option and scrolling up and down goes through your History. Option-Scroll Up works like the Forward button, Option-Scroll Down works like the back button. It's very convenient for finding a page that you went to earlier in a day, especially on a fast connection.

May 09 2007 at 7:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fritz Laurel

;)

May 09 2007 at 3:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeem

#1: Once you zoom in with the scroll button you can scroll around the screen by moving the mouse in any direction. Neat. Does it remind anyone else of QuickTime VR?

May 09 2007 at 12:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kim

Matt, just command-minus to zoom out (and command-plus to zoom in)... no need to reboot.

May 09 2007 at 11:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rich

Has anyone tried crtl+command and scroll button in a Camino browser window ? It zooms the text size up and down within the frames / tables. I can't make Safari do it.

May 09 2007 at 11:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gediminas.paulauskas

#2 should read Press Command, press and release Tab to show application list, scroll through applications, and when an application is selected, press H (with the forefinger of left hand, the one which holds Command with the thumb) to hide...

May 09 2007 at 5:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Wojtek

#3: in fact: it can be simplified with any mouse that supports up/down AND left/right scrolling. Like Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth (which still lacks Tiger enhancement software, BTW).

May 09 2007 at 4:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nick

For the record, you can command-left click to open a new tab via a link as well.

May 08 2007 at 10:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matt

Zooming the screen with the scroll wheel is pretty neat...unless your crappy Mighty Mouse scroll sphere is broken, and doesn't scroll down anymore...I had to reboot my machine to fix it!!

May 08 2007 at 10:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tim

SWEET! For the record... the opening in a new tab feature worked for me in FF and Camino as well. This is GREAT for me! Thanks!

May 08 2007 at 10:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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