Closed Bug 21902 Opened 25 years ago Closed 24 years ago

Logitech Trakball scrolling

Categories

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect, P3)

Product:
Core
Component:
DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling
Platform:
x86
Windows NT
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 58589
Milestone:
Future

People

(Reporter: metrol, Assigned: bryner)

Details

I'm pretty sure this bug is related to Bug #20618.  Using a Trakman Marble FX
here with version 8.1 of the driver software.  I'm happy to say that the
vertical scrolling that is enacted from clicking on a pre-defined button works
pretty well.  One concern about this is that the scrolling jumps 4 to 5 lines at
a time and it requires that you click to acquire focus.  It does function
though, which is a heck of a lot more than I can say for IE.
  Being that this is a trakball implementation of scrolling I should be able to
scroll 4 ways if scroll bars are available vertically and horizontally.  This
part is not working.  At the present time only vertical scrolling is allowed.

  What I think will become an interesting issue is how best to strike a balance
between folks scrolling with a trakball versus those using a scroll button on a
mouse.  It's quite a different experience depending on which your on.  For a
scroll button it feels right to jump 5 lines at a time since there is a tactile
feedback letting the user know that something should have happened on screen.
On a trakball I would generally expect a smoother operation, since that is what
my fingers are feeding back to me.
  Normally these kinds of things aren't an issue since the mouse driver is
helping make these decisions with the OS's windowing system, which in my case is
NT.

  Quick summary... need to enable horizontal scrolling.  Logitech scrolling is
jumping to far for trakballs.  I would recommend a 3 line jump at a time to
strike a balance.  Focus problem in Bug #20618 still needs addressed.
I don't know that we can accurately detect at runtime whether the user is on a
trackball or mouse.  There is a preferences dialog for this in the works though,
and I could try to get a field added for the number of lines to scroll.  Would
that be a good enough resolution of the problem?
By the way, Chris Saari (saari@netscape.com) is going to work on the focus
problem you mentioned. We should see some progress on this during Januray.
Assignee: leger → bryner
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Taking this bug.

Also, about the horizontal scrolling part of this bug -- I need some more
information about how those events are done in Windows.  Vertical scrolls are
delivered via the WM_MOUSEWHEEL message, and as far as I can tell there is no
directional indicator in that message.  If you can point me to some developer
documentation of some sort, it probably wouldn't be hard to add this in.
Unfortunately I don't know much about how Logitech emulates scrolling.  I'm
pretty sure it's a good bit different than how MS does it, mostly due to the
fact that MS wheels work in IE 5.0, but this Logitech driver doesn't.  I was all
over Logitech's web site, but I didn't run into anything that looked like the
kind of detail you would be needing.

In an attempt to follow through on this for ya, the following is a letter to
Logitech's tech support that I sent tonight.

--
Recently I submitted a bug report to the Mozilla project letting them know that
horizontal scrolling was not functioning properly with my Marble F/X.  One of
the developers got back with me inquiring as to how to make calls to the
Logitech drivers.  Would you be able to point me to where you guys have some
documentation on that so I could follow up with Mozilla?  Just looking to help
Mozilla with getting their browser going, and to make sure my favorite trak ball
can be used nicely with it.
--

As soon as I hear something back from them on this I'll get that posted up here
ASAP.
The request for info can be found at the following site

http://www.logitech.globalsupport.com
Case ID is: 201794

Based on previous experience in dealing with Logitech I wouldn't be expecting an
especially quick answer to this.
This isn't going well at all.  Just got a reply back from Logitech.
--
RESOLUTION:
==========
You can check in the readme file that is in the mouseware program. You can
also check out our web site at www.logitech.com.
--

I then posted a new request with them
--
Thank you for such a timely yet completely useless answer.  As I would already
hope you well know, the Readme.TXT file does not come with any sort of
documentation of this sort.  I am also aware of the location of your web site,
thus the source of where this letter originated.  What I am not aware of is
where an answer to my question might be found within the domain
www.logitech.com.  Might there be some hope for an actual answer?
--
With a new case number: 205587
Does the horizontal scrolling work in a lot of other Windows applications?
Component: Browser-General → Event Handling
QA Contact: leger → janc
Updating QA Contact
Yes, the horizontal scrolling works in every application it would have a purpose
in, with the exception of IE which doesn't react to it at all.  All the office
97 apps, various text and html editors, file explorer (not integrated with IE),
even Photoshop reacts to it.  Somehow or other it's making a call to the normal
windowing API, and any app that uses it reacts appropriately to it.  Since
Mozilla doesn't go that route I'm kinda surprised that even the vertical works.
Being that I'm not a programmer I really wouldn't even know where to begin
looking for how they interface it.

When it comes right down to it, there's going to be 3 scrolling standards you'll
need to look at for Mozilla.  Microsoft's, Logitech's, and Kensington's.  These
are the folks that are pretty much the industry leaders on the PC platform.
I've got some folks at work who use the Kensington trak balls, but I haven't had
a chance yet to test them out on Mozilla as of yet.  Probably shortly after
Christmas I'll try and sneak a little testing on one of these boxes to see how
that plays out.
Yet another useless reply from logitech.  For what it's worth, here it is...

Thank you for your interest in Logitech's products. Unfortunately, the
information you are requesting is not something we can provide. If you wish
to
pursue your inquiry, please mail your request to Logitech at:

Logitech Inc.
6505 Kaiser Drive
Fremont, CA 94555

Your letter should include the specific
information you are requesting as
well as a daytime contact information. Please
be aware that your mail may
not be answered.
Nothing new to report from Logitech, and probably won't have anything from them
either.  Just documenting the fact that the new pref for setting the wheel rate
works pretty darn nicely.  Although when set to 2 lines I get about 4 lines of
jump, at 3 I get close to 10.  Even still, I can now tweak it to act a lot more
like NS 4.7 does.
  The focus and horizontal scroll problems are still present.  One problem down
at least.
The focus problems will be taken care of shortly once some new things are
checked into nsEventStateManager.

I don't know what else to do with the horizontal scrolling part, so I'm marking
this LATER. (I'd still like to implement it if I can come up with a way to do
so)
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago
Resolution: --- → LATER
  Just going over some old bugs here, and I thought I'd update this one with a
little playing I've been doing.  I went and turned off the gfx scroll bars just
to see how it would play.  Turns out that the scrolling works precisely as it
should when gfx is off, to include horizontal scrolling.
  With gfx on the page scroll is jumpy and slow to respond.  With gfx off the
page scroll is nice and smooth, and it moves at the approximate speed of how
fast I move my trakball.  Is this due to Mozilla using the standard Windows API
for scrolling when gfx is turned off?  This would seem to make sense seeing as
how the Logitech drivers would most likely be looking to affect this.
  Oh well, I guess gfx gets to stay turned off for a while.  If anyone gets into
wanting to tackle this problem please feel free to get in contact with me for
additional testing.
Keywords: verifyme
Verified Later.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
For what it may be worth at this point, the Logitech driver is now completely 
inoperative for horizontal scrolling for Mozilla in any component.  Leaving this 
bug at Verified Later for someone else to determine if this warrants an upgrade 
in importance.
Doh!  I just read over what I wrote.  What I meant to say was that VERTICAL
scrolling is now dead.  The horizontal scrolling never worked, so this just
evens things up a bit.  My apologies for the goof.
LATER is now :) This looks like an open issue. Maybe FUTURE instead of LATER?
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Keywords: verifyme
Resolution: LATER → ---
Target Milestone: --- → Future
actually, we have a bug on horizontal scrolling, 58589.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 58589 ***
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago → 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
v
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
transferring these to my netscape.com email.
Assignee: bryner → bryner
Component: Event Handling → User events and focus handling
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