SideTrack - Add new functionality to your trackpad
Oct 08, '03 09:05:00AM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 9 out of 10]
If you've ever used a PC laptop, you may have become addicted to the variety of functions that are available via their trackpads and multiple buttons. Usually you can program the pad and buttons to do whatever you like, through some sort of control panel interface. You can set scrolling areas on the pad, remap buttons, etc. to your liking.
While we can't do anything about the physical one-button nature of our Mac laptops, SideTrack will let you take care of the programmability aspect. SideTrack is a replacement trackpad driver (though the original mouse/trackpad driver is not uninstalled!) for OS X laptops -- it's not a hack or system tweak, so there's not as much fear of tweak-related instability. Installation is a simple double-click and a restart, after which you'll find a new SideTrack item in the Other section of the System Preferences application. Activate the panel, and you'll find settings for the functionality of the trackpad button, tapping on the trackpad, creating vertical and horizontal scroll areas (location and size), and scroll speed. Use the pop-ups to set things to your liking, and then just start enjoying the new functionality. Once nice touch is that the preferences are multi-user aware, so you can have different settings for everyone that uses your laptop.
I set my PowerBook to have vertical and horizontal scroll areas at the right and top of the trackpad. So while browsing the web, there's no more using the arrow keys or the mouse to navigate around the on-screen display. When I want to read further down a page, a quick drag down the right edge of the trackpad scrolls the window. Very useful! Since SideTrack works by emulating a scroll-wheel mouse, it will only work in applications that already support such devices -- so if your favorite app doesn't work with a scroll wheel mouse, it won't work with SideTrack either.
Since I can't do anything in hardware about the lack of a second mouse button, I used the "Trackpad tap" setting to emulate it -- one of the available pop-up settings is "right click." So now a quick tap on the pad, and I get the contextual menus. Click the physical button, and it behaves as a normal "left" click. This removes one of my greatest PowerBook annoyances -- having to reach for the control key whenever I wanted a contextual menu.
Although SideTrack is in beta, I've had it installed on two machines for a couple of weeks without any issues. If you need to temporarily disable it, you can do so by booting with the shift key down. Permanent removal instructions are included in the Read Me. But once you've tried it, you may find you don't want to ever uninstall it -- SideTrack is, to me, one of those small, functional, and seemingly instantly essential pieces of software. I'm giving it a 9 out of 10 only because it's still in beta...
Comments (31)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031008051512365