Topic awaiting preservation: Mouse Wheel as Browser Back Button? (Page 1 of 1)

OK, something weird just happened to me. I was just about to send off an e-mail, and I flicked my mouse wheel down to scroll down the page. Rather than scrolling the page, though, it activated the browsers back button, sending me all the way back to my home page. Needless to say, I lost the contents of the e-mail I was about to send.

At first I thought it was a "feature," and looked around for some way to turn it off. However, I have been unable to reproduce the behavior. In fact, now that I think about it, it doesn't really make sense. If the page has focus, it should scroll, and if it doesn't it shouldn't do anything. Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? Is this actually a feature?

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

this sounds strange indeed. which browser are you using? maybe you have clicked on a certain area of the browser, and if you start scrolling, the browser takes the mouse wheel as a back button......?!
btw, were you also able to us it as a forward button?

| - THESPACE - | E.A. | PORTFOLI0 | lonesome | CELL 557

It's a feature actually - hold down a Shift key to 'activate' it. Did that accidentally a number of times already as well... =)

wow, you are right. its even a nice feature

Firefox Help: Mouse Shortcuts & Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts

Bandwagon American Since 9/11/01

(Edited by Jestah on 06-01-2004 18:12)

That is awesome, a lovely shortcut.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

Ctrl+Mouse Button in IE will resize fonts too.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I am using IE5, and I never knew it was actually a feature. So holding down any shift key will activate it? Is there any way to turn it off permanently? I'd rather just stick with using the browser buttons, as a mouse wheel is not exactly a precision tool... and i'd rather not run the risk of accidentally doing what I did yesterday. In other words, the risks outweigh any possible benefits, at least for me...

[Edit: Hold up... I did know about that, I had just forgotten. But I thought that you had to be holding down the shift key for this to work. I wasn't holding down anything at the time... sounds like a glitch to me.]

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

(Edited by Suho1004 on 06-02-2004 02:55)

Maybe your Shift Key is a bit shifty?


You can also use the shift key while clicking on a link to open it in a new window. I mention this only because I use it a lot...

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Seek not truth with deceitful intent...
...for that way lies the seed of dissent.
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That's a Capital idea! get it, Shift, Capital heh, ah well
Another little gem.

:::tao::: ::cell::

White Hawk: That's actually quite handy... a heck of a lot handier than some other features...

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

Awww, I'm going to go all geeky now. Sorry.

My favorite shortcuts:

Shift+Left-click opens a link in a new window.

Ctrl+N opens a duplicate of the current window (if you want to come back to it while surfing).

Shift+Tab back-tabs selections (I'm always tabbing past the box I want, then reaching for the mouse anyway).

Hope they're helpful to you too.

(Edited by White Hawk on 06-03-2004 02:35)

Hehe, yep, I use the other two shortcuts you mentioned quite frequently... just never knew about the shift-left-click one. Cheers.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

And for those fellow firefoxers, Strg-left-click opens links in a new tab instead of a new window...

An addition to the scroll-wheel feature

have your mouse cursor over a link, and if you hold hsoft and scroll up it goes to that link, instead of forward

lol - that's so much more straight-forward than just clicking the link

^^^^ LOL !!

My mouse has browser buttons anyhow so not much use i guess T.T

Even has a button which opens the quick program selecter, good to use instead of alt tabbing - press it once the mouse to the one u want.

Logitech MX500 etc rock!

kuckus: the same thing also happens if you click on a link with your mousewheel

Nothing constructive to add....just wanted to say that I 8really* hate it when my scroll wheel does anything other than scroll.

^Yup. That's pretty much why I started this thread in the first place. Still haven't figured out why the mouse wheel acted as the browser back button when I wasn't holding shift down...

I just think it would be really nice if we could choose which "features" we wanted to have implemented... but I doubt that will happen any time soon.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!

Suho : Did you check your mouse software ? It`s possible there`s an option in there that might help. You didn`t mention what mouse you`re using, but mine lets me define what the wheel does and doesn`t do.

I have a Microsoft Intellimouse with two side buttons. I tried them out as Back and Forward, but I was forever hitting them accidentally.

They're pretty good for Ctrl/Alt functions in Photoshop though.

I'm using a Samsung Optical Wheel Mouse, but I have no separate software installed for it. Also, considering the fact that the behavior is very irregular (I can only recall this happening to me a few times), I can only assume it's a glitch.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!

I still say your shift key might be shifty...