MS Intellimouse optical, 4th & 5th buttons.

[wildwolf]

When I'm in windows, I use these as the defaut "forward" and "backward" when browsing the 'net.

Is it possible to get the same results in Linux? That....is about the only thing I _really_ dislike about linux, and something that prevents me from using it more.:confused:

[IronGeek]

I believe Linux has a limit to the # of keys you can map on the mouse. Generally, the standard right and left clicks, along with a wheel or 3rd button. Linux allows for 3 button mouse emulation but I have a similar input device and haven't pursued the issue of mapping the navigation buttons for internet browsing. Perhaps you could try a search for information on the subject. That's how I learned how to map the keys for wheel support under Netscape. Best of luck and I hope you find all the great things to appreciate about the OS even if you can't fulfill all your requests.

[JohnT]

You should be asking is there a browser capable of supporting this. I believe the new builds of Mozilla do and I know the Phoenix browser supports 5-button. Might check Opera too. Most support mouse movements.

[wildwolf]

What little I've found (although I admit I haven't searched extensively yet) leads me to believe that linux could easily enough support more buttons, but Mosiac or some other entity didn't support more than 3.

Whatever is holding this back, I sure hope somebody is working on getting support. They can make the latest & greatest video cards, sound cards, SCSI cards, USB, firewire, etc work, surely they can get all the buttons on a mouse to be mappable to user defined functions.

[bwkaz]

You can map them to user-defined functions, it's called imwheel.

You change the Buttons directive in your XF86Config(-4) to 7, change ZAxisMapping to "6 7", then switch around 4 & 6, 5 & 7, so that the ZAxisMapping is still "4 5" (as far as the apps can tell).

Then you use imwheel to define mappings (per-window title) from buttons 6 & 7 to different keystrokes. Or you ditch imwheel and use a browser (more accurately, a browser that uses a toolkit) that understands buttons 6 & 7, and they'll work.

[mdwatts]

Something that I saved from a previous post here at LNO. Modify as required.


How to get X to use all the Intellimouse Explorer's buttons

This is relatively easy to do. You must be using XFree 4.x for this to work though, as this mouse
technically has 7 buttons, and 3.x only supports up to 5.

The mouse section in your XF86Config should look like this:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "Buttons" "7"
EndSection

You have to map the mousewheel out of the way as shown, as otherwise the extra buttons aren't
detected. Now we can swap stuff back though.

Either add this line to your .xinitrc: xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" or add this line to
your ~/.Xmodmap: pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5.

That's it. The side buttons will be 6 and 7 now, and mousewheel scrolling will work as ever.
You can bind the buttons to do whatever you like in your favorite windowmanager and applications.

[MkIII_Supra]

Please...

[wildwolf]

Can anybody explain what I need to do to install imwheel? I try, but can't get the configure to run. Get this error:

checking for XmuInternAtom in -lXmu... yes
checking for XTestFakeDeviceKeyEvent in -lXtst... yes
configure: error: conditional "NO_GPM_DOC" was never defined.
Usually this means the macro was only invoked conditionally.


Any clues what I need to do? This is on a Mandrake 9.0 machine.

[wildwolf]

Ok, have it installed. Have the default .imwheelrc for my account in place. Anybody know what/how I need to adjust it so that the browsers will recognize the two side buttons as back/forward now? I'm having very little luck.

[JohnT]

If you followed MD Watts configuration and still can't get it to work post your file, so we can get an idea. What type of connection do you have?

[dcfxq]

Thanks for that post mdwatts, mine is a Fellowes 5 button which similarly doesn't repsond to the back/foward buttons.

I'll try it as see if that will work for me as well.

I've gotten lazy since installing it in XP and also would allow me to close down that toolbar and gain more desk space!:)

[Dizzybacon]

There's actually an NHF on this here (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Hardware/Configuring_the_Intellimouse_Explorer_in_XFree86.h tml).

Dizzy