Comments on: Drag-scrolling in Safari

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 30 May 2004 12:04:45 +0000

I really stand for Windows and IE… I don’t see anything wrong with Saft but I think you have more possibilities with IE. Just my 2 cents.

“Windows users are thinking, “Typical of these Mac fanatics to hype on a small feature.” That’s fine. Sometimes we do.” – I think that’s what Windows users do as well. Or am I the only one? – then I should buy a Mac :))

By: Peter Eliasson

Peter Eliasson — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 11:12:41 +0000

Hey, let’s all remember that famous line from Darth Vader (slightly paraphrased): “Windows vs Macs? There IS no conflict.”

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:28:04 +0000

The first post on this thread is comparing a windows browser to safari. I thought it was appropriate to offer my own perspective about windows vs macs. It wasn’t meant to be irrelavent, cause when I look at the comments I see various issues regarding macs vs windows. I offered my view only.

By: Jay Allen

Jay Allen — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 05:40:18 +0000

The features mentioned in comments by Mark (#7) and Andy (#14) are huge in my opinion. What's crazy is that I never knew these. Although I said as much before, this is one of the reasons that I find Apple products so damn compelling. They are simple to use for the beginner and subtlely deep for the advanced user. Amazing.

By: Kaushal P Parikh

Kaushal P Parikh — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:23:37 +0000

Have any of you guys every tried Knoppix?

By: m

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:40:52 +0000

The All-in-One Gestures extension (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marc.boullet/ext/extensions-en.html) for Mozilla Firefox has drag-scroll support. However, it’s limited to the middle button which makes it unusable for trackpads.

By: Douglas Bowman

Douglas Bowman — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:42:44 +0000

I deleted Jim’s original comment because it was entirely off-topic. A partial quote from it: “…Windows XP is far more better than Macos [sic] and yet quite cheaper…” may be Jim’s opinion, but it did not add anything productive or relevant to this conversation.

Same goes for another deleted comment by someone named “Tim”: “Why do you first provoke people in your article, try to insult windows users and then demand that everybody has to focus on the topic. That’s not mac fanaticism, it is sort of idiocy.”

My post was not about comparing the Mac and Windows operating systems. I simply discovered a new feature (to me) of a plugin for a Mac application, and thought I’d share. I made no insults toward Windows users. I pointed out an odd trait of Mac users in that we tend to get hyped up over small features, and non-Mac users laugh at us. Again, that’s fine, but there’s no insult there, certainly not one toward Windows users. I still use Windows on occasion, and am well aware of the differences, but that’s not relevant to this post. I’m leaving Jim’s second comment in (#22), and will let others make up their own minds whether it was appropriate or not for comments like it to be made.

I’m putting a response here because neither Jim nor Tim provided real email addresses to which I could respond in person.

Otherwise, thanks to everyone else for your input.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:18:41 +0000

I still say you should switch and use a real computer, windows PC. You can delete this one also but remember that being rude to windows users is only going to reduce your credibility.

By: Louis

Louis — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 11:58:42 +0000

It seems that a few people are likening this feature to using a scroll-wheel. However, certainly with my mouse, the scroll-wheel only allows the page to be scrolled vertically and not horizontally.

Anyway, it’s a nice find Doug, and I’ll be sure to check it out.

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 01:40:37 +0000

Indeed, it’s really easy to stick with 2+ butons — I use the same USB optical wheely mouse with my wintel laptop for work and my iBook at home. Microsoft even has Mac drivers for it if you want to tweak the acceleration and things, but it also works fine just by plugging it in.

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 02:25:47 +0000

“After “switching” 3 years ago I still have not gotten over the almost painful transition from 2 button mice”

Why did you have to stop using a 2 button Mouse. I’m using one right now with my PowerBook

It kind of amazes me that people still complain about the apple one button mouse. 2+ buttons, scrollwheels, etc are all available for a Mac, and most are quite inexpensive.

By: Don

Don — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 04:55:04 +0000

Opera was the first and best browser for giving full screen presentations. No chrome is visible in fullscreen, not even a scrollbar (unless you set it that way). You can visit the OperaShow page for more info: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/

There’s also a presentation generator there.

By: Riccardo

Riccardo — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 04:22:53 +0000

«While writing this entry, I was also reminded this functionality exists (and has existed for a while) in IE5/Mac if you hold down the Command-key, then click and drag.»

In the good ol’ days of MacOS 9 (sigh…), all the finder windows had this nice little feature.
Don’t know why they stripped it away in OS X – maybe because of the embarassing quartz scrolling perfomance of chetaah and puma…

By: Erik Simmler

Erik Simmler — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 02:50:06 +0000

I guess neither side can resist what they view as an opportunity to tweak the other guy’s nose. “Oh, I’ve had that for years… and it’s built in!” or “Really, how useful is that anyway?”

Anyway, I’m curious. In general how would you compare this to using say, a scroll wheel. I can live for (admittedly short) periods of time without a second mouse button, but I hate having to click and/or drag the mouse to scroll.

By: Jamie Kirkpatrick

Jamie Kirkpatrick — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 22:19:55 +0000

For God’s sake. We all know the author of this Weblog is a Mac user, so why do people take the obvious and stupid opportunity to jump on the old Mac / PC argument with an article like this?

The article wasn’t a Mac vs PC article, so why do people feel the need for such irrelevant comments?

PS – A short thanks – I read this blog every day. great stuff.

By: Andy Budd

Andy Budd — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 17:50:27 +0000

In Safari, if you click on the page, hold down shift and then drag outside the viewport, you can scroll as well.

By: James Z

James Z — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 16:28:32 +0000

After "switching" 3 years ago I still have not gotten over the almost painful transition from 2 button mice, and all the useful shortcuts that Sony had integrated into their trackpads. The one that I miss the most is the mapped trackpad features. Sidetrack comes close, but it is in beta and still has some bugs. Hopefully Apple will, as doug put it "See the light of day".

By: Todd Dominey

Todd Dominey — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 14:44:21 +0000

Is anyone able to get true full-screen in Firefox / OS X? I downloaded that AutoHide extension, but it doesn’t seem to work (or I couldn’t figure it out).

By: Jason Dronet

Jason Dronet — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 13:08:09 +0000

I use FireFox 0.8, and you can hide the chrome at the top by before going to full screen mode, goto View > Toolbars > and uncheck the navigation and bookmarks toolbars. Now in full screen mode, there are no tool bars, just the scroll bars. I am on a Windows box with XP if that matters.

By: Alphab

Alphab — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:34:09 +0000

FYO, this extension (http://www.krickelkrackel.de/autohide.htm) provides an easy true full screen mode to Firefox.