The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

It’s not very often that you find a user interface or interaction capability on the PC platform that the Mac hasn’t already done well but I have always been hugely disappointed with the trackpads on Apple’s portables. Why? Simply put, the trackpad on my Tablet PC is a whole lot smarter, allowing me to scroll vertically and horizontally, assign hot spots for different functions, and even launch applications.

Happily, a developer with the intriguing name of Raging Menace has leveled this playing filed with SideTrack - a better driver for the Apple trackpads. It’s shareware with no time limit (it does pop up a nag screen at random intervals) and it costs only $15.00. A great investment in functionality if you’re an iBook or PowerBook user.

Here’s a list of features from the site which has a very nice assortment of screenshots:

SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Apple PowerBook and iBook trackpads. With SideTrack installed your standard trackpad becomes a powerful multi-button scrolling mouse. Leave your external mouse at home and take full control over your trackpad:

• Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
• Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
• Map hardware button to left or right click.
• Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag, or right click.
• Map trackpad corner taps to mouse buttons 1-6 or simulated keystrokes.
• Extensive control over accidental input filtering.

SideTrack is multiuser aware and fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.3 fast user switching (FUS). Every user on your PowerBook can have different settings depending on their needs.

While Google says that Internet Explorer is required to use the new Google Desktop Search, intrepid developers have released the Firefox Toolbar that extends the Desktop Search to the Firefox browser on Windows and the Google Toolbar to Firefox on the Mac. This new toolbar allows one-click access to Gmail and the ability to search your Gmail account.

Adding Google Desktop Search to the toolbar in Windows requires an easy “hack” but it is one Google themselves provide to add Google Desktop Search to their own Deskbar. I’ve hacked my Google Deskbar and it works fine.

The Firefox Toolbar works with Firefox 0.9 and the PR1 release.

NOTE: This post has been updated. I originally indicated (incorrectly) that this toolbar enabled Google Desktop Search on the Mac. As a reader pointed out in the comments to this post, Google Desktop Search requires an .exe file that is currently only available for Windows 2000 and XP. Sorry for the error.