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I've recently purchased the lovely Apple Magic Mouse and am finding it quite difficult to use with InDesign CS4 - other ID versions would be the same I imagine. With this mouse you scroll by stroking its top surface, rather like a trackpad. This is excellent in other applications but in ID, because the pasteboard area is so large and the sensitivity of the mouse so high (even when scrolling is turned down to the minimum in its preferences), it's very easy to make your document shoot sideways off the screen. I expect Illustrator would have similar problems.
Is there a way in which the ID pasteboard can be resized or constrained? Maybe someone will come up with a prefs panel to control the new mouse's scrolling more precisely - but not yet.
Thanks for any ideas.
John Mallinson
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I'm not writing because I know the answer, but to follow your thread. I've been thinking about buying the mouse, but want to hear how it works with ID, etc.
I'm suprised it doesn't let you control the speed, since the macbook track pad gives pretty reasonable controls. I looked at the video and saw a scrolling with momentum with other options in the drop box. Do those do anything?
Any other pros/cons you can mention specific to ID?
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I like the mouse very much in all applications I've tried except InDesign because of the problem I've mentioned. It's the ease of sending the page skittering off laterally out of sight which is annoying. The prefs panel settings don't give a very big range of scrolling sensitivities but certainly turning the scroll sensitivity right down and unchecking scrolling with momentum does help.
In other apps where the window size tends to conform to the size of the document this isn't a problem. I like the two finger swipe for going back and forward in Safari and Firefox.
John
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I wonder which sort of mouse you used before the "magic" mouse?
I was very impressed with the earlier "mighty" mouse when it was released, because of the ability to scroll horizontally, and to quickly fly about like hell on wheels using the little ball thing in the middle. But it took a lot of "preference adjusting" to get it to work the way I really wanted it to.
But then later, I got a Logitech mouse whose scroll wheel can be tilted/clicked (nudging what's in the screen horizontally, click-by-click with much more precision than the mighty mouse).
I still use the "mighty" mouse, on another computer, with affection. But there is always a problem of predictability. I wonder if the "magic" mouse can get over those difficulties? -- My guess is that the controlling software needs to be updated, and probably will, quite soon.
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Used the mighty mouse before and it was distinctly more controllable (in ID)!
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Not that it's any consolation, but I've got the same problem. Exact same thing happens with Google docs spreadsheet as with ID: sudden page jumps, unreliable clicking locations, and superfast scrolling. People suggest it's Bluetooth, or ID, or the mouse driver, so that doesn't leave us with much to go on. Mouse setting adjustments definitely do NOT help, as I've tried them all.
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Could so few people have this problem? I'm using a Magic Mouse with 10.6 and, yes, CS3 ID is also out of control with the wildly sensitve mouse. Worse yet, the scrolling occurs when ID isn't even the active app, so you can come back to the document but not where you left it. It's an extremely annoying attribute of an otherwise sensational improvement in pointers.
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Same here. I think it's because ID scrolls a lot with each 'tick', compared to the pixelwise scrolling in browsers and regular text documents.
Photoshop appears to scroll like one would expect. (Just a mo') And so does Illustrator.
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I would also like to add myslef to the list.
I have found posts on the apple forum for 3rd party drivers but none of them seem to work.
Any help would be great.
Thanks
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Having the same problem here—the Apple mouse scrolling in ID and Illustrator is insanely bad.
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Someone posted (I don't remember who), that if you turn off "momentum scolling" (or whatever it's called) in the mouse preferences, that solves the problem...
Harbs
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Thanks for the advice - however I haven't found this to be the case (just
tried this and it didn't work—will try at home on the Mac Pro to see if it
works there with that one's M. Mouse) - Mahalo, Adam
Adam Prall
[signature removed]
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I have not yet used a magic mouse myself, so I don't have further comment.
In the future, please remove your signature before posting. You really don't want your email address posted on the web...
Harbs
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I've had the same email address for over 12 years, I'm pretty comfortable with it wherever it's posted...
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I've seen this suggested in other forums. It doesn't work, at least not to solve the problem with ID, Google maps and docs, and Excel. I have found it a little easier to control if I keep both fingers atop the mouse when scrolling around; that seems to eliminate stray and unintentional clicking.
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I've had the same email address for over 13 years, I'm pretty comfortable
with it wherever it's posted... anyway, back on topic, I've been looking
around I haven't seen any controls for scrolling sensitivity in these
programs, which obviously use their own hooks into the mouse driver. If
anyone comes across a patch or hidden preference editor, at least for ID, it
would be helpful to post it here—I'll poke around the ID plist and see if
there's anything in there).
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It's supposed to be in system preferences...
Harbs
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It is in Sys Pref's but it means you'll lose a valuable functionality of the Magic Mouse for everything else you do, a classic example of pitching out the baby with the bath.
I've tried a few of the plug-ins and met new aggravations, but probably as a matter of personal preference, not worth burdening the forum.
Let's just say pointing with gestures has a long way to go. To some extent the gestures should be App or even Doc level pref's, but not inconsistent across the System.
As disappointing as this is to the few in these threads, I'm surprised this isn't a bigger issue. Any thoughts?
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It's annoying, but I quickly learned to control it (somewhat) -- mainly by not resting my fingertips idly on top of the mouse, but grabbing it left and right to move and let my clicking fingers hover above it; and by not operating it when under the influence of too much caffeine.
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Part of the problem may lie with Adobe. They have made some weird decisions with regards to how they deal with input over the years. Sometimes they are not the correct ones at all for OS X. For example, I loathe and revile their decision in CS4 to steal the shift scrollwheel shortcut for accelerated page up/page down scrolling. OS X, system-wide it is scroll left/scroll right on Macs. It may be that CS5 has better support for the Magic Mouse now they know it exists.
For now, one option might be a script that tunes your settings for InDesign work. When you know you're going to do ID for a long stretch of time, trigger the script. When you're done, trigger it again to go back.
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Thanks @heavyboots; turning down scrolling speed to minimum does help
InDesign—the only problem is that it’s not really doable for most people
(like me, unfortunately!) who switch rapidly between apps and use scrolling
speed extensively. I have a feeling Adobe will release a patch for this
soon…
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I agree, it's far too sensitive. The core problem is that we have become so accustomed to resting our fingers on the surface of mice, because they always require a *definite* press, or scroll action. Now the magic mouse is so sensitive to ANY touch that it reacts to touches meant to push the mouse or were not meant to contact the surface of the mouse.
At first I liked it a bit, but the more I use it, I think it's Apple's worst mouse ever. Puck included (at least you could buy a housing to put them in). This mouse doesn't "seem" to track the same as all other wired mice I've ever used. The touch interface is great for vertical scrolling, but as pointed out here, far to sensitive in circumstances where such scrolling is not desired. Perhaps this could be rectified with a *very* comprehensive preference panel, ie one that lets a user specify the amount of scroll or movement required to initiate a swipe/scroll. The Wacom tablet panel has such prefs, for each program and an overall control as well (ie all unspecified apps). My other major complaint against the mouse is the overall shape. It is simple not comfortable or natural. I prefer a more bulbous mouse, since like many of you I imagine, I end up using the back of my palm to "push" the mouse around or rest my fingers on it. The Magic doesn't lend to resting on it at all. I also need to lift it up, or scroll it farther to the side of the screen than the room I have on my mouse surface. With my Mighty Mouse I pick it up by the sides and put it back down somwhere in the center of my mouse area. I have a dual screen setup, and my coworkers all have 24" iMacs, so it can still be a lot of screen space to traverse.
My Magic Mouse was a gift, but I still feel the $70 for it was a waste. I use it primarily because the scroll ball on the Mighty gets dirty fast and does not respond, and at that I rest the Magic next to my keyboard to scroll but still use the Mighty 95% of the time. If Apple would have made the exact same Mighty Mouse but only made the center area where the ball is, a touch sensitive surface, I would be in mouse heaven (they could delineate the area with a small inscribed line or something).
IMHO big Apple Fail.
Chris
aka SuperMacGuy
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I teach this stuff so I should know that it's a mistake to think "it's my fault." I'm afraid the magic is wearing pretty thin for me too. I have to use a track ball due to a life over-moused, but it's sad how the evolution of the mouse has gone. The white/clear ones failed due to broken connections where the USB wire went into the hard plastic housing. The little wheel on the next version clogged with whatever that disgusting clogger goo is. Now this.
Anybody else have any luck with the third party drivers? Dare I ask if there's an app for that?
Anybody know what percentage of users use Magic Mouse what percentage of the time? It would help to know if one were to press Adobe to fix Apple's problem.
True that this isn't inventing anything. Tablets set preference all the way down to the tool level, on the fly. Setting pref's only at the OS level is a terrible idea for most users, I'm sure.
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I actually like the Mighty Mouse. A little water (or alcohol) every
once in a while takes care of the scroll ball problem.
Harbs
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In spite of the over-sensitivity I love the Magic Mouse. Excellent for web-browsing and programmes that support the two-finger swipe for navigation. I use MagicPrefs to add a three-finger click for Exposé and that seems to work pretty well. Unfortunately MagicPrefs does not include per-application preferences which is what we seem to need to deal with my original problem. Surely someone, somewhere must make this possible soon. I'm not holding my breath for Apple or Adobe to solve the problem.