ScrollMagick gives you faster, more intuitive ways to scroll through documents than the scroll bar and keyboard do. The best way to see what ScrollMagick can do is to open up the control panel and play with it — you’ll be able to use ScrollMagick in a scrolling information panel, without needing to restart.
If you’d like a little more information about ScrollMagick before you start using it, or you’re looking for a better understanding of how ScrollMagick works, the rest of this document may be of use to you.
ScrollMagick has two modes, the more useful of which is arguably the Hover Scroll mode. With it, you don’t even need to click – simply “hover” the cursor over the edge of a window in order to scroll it. An “edge,” for ScrollMagick’s purposes, is defined as the top 10% or bottom 10% of a window, although this definition can be changed by clicking on the “Options...” button in the control panel. In the window below, these “edges” are shaded in red.
If you move the cursor into the top edge of the window, the window scrolls upwards. Likewise, if you move the cursor into the bottom edge, it scrolls down. The further you move the cursor into a scroll region, the faster the window scrolls. For example, if the cursor is in the bottom portion of the top scroll region, the window will scroll slowly, and if the cursor is in the top part of the same scroll region, the window will scroll more quickly.
When ScrollMagick is scrolling the window in this way, the cursor will change into an arrow pointing in the direction that the window is scrolling in:
ScrollMagick’s other mode, Grab Scroll, lets you “grab” the contents of windows and drag them up and down. The trickiest part of using Grab Scroll is determining when to have it activate. Grab Scroll can activate either when the cursor is in the window edges (as above) or when you hold down a certain set of modifier keys. (Command, Option, etc.) To configure this, click on the “Options...” button in the ScrollMagick control panel, which will bring up this dialog:
(You can also, if you wish, adjust the size of what ScrollMagick considers “edges” in this dialog, but the defaults should be suitable for most people.)
If the “On Edges Only” option is selected, Grab Scroll will activate when the cursor is within the edges of a window. If “Anywhere, but only with these keys” is selected, Grab Scroll will activate when you’re holding down the modifier keys selected, and only the modifier keys selected. When Grab Scroll is activated by one of these methods, the cursor will change into a hand, signaling that you’re now able to grab and drag the window contents. (If both Hover Scroll and Grab Scroll are enabled, and Hover Scroll is scrolling the window, the cursor changes into a hand with a small arrow inside of it, showing that the window is currently scrolling, but that you’re also able to grab it.)
When one of these cursors is shown, click and hold down the mouse button in order to grab the window contents. The cursor will change to a “grabbed” hand, and when you drag the mouse up and down, the window will follow.
Grab Scroll works particularly well with a programmable multi-button mouse or trackball, because you can make Grab Scroll activate with one of your extra buttons. Simply set ScrollMagick to activate Grab Scroll with a combination of modifier keys, (all of the keys together works best for this purpose) and then set your mouse to emulate a click with these keys on the button that you wish to use for Grab Scroll.
In some applications, ScrollMagick is not able to scroll the window as quickly as you move the mouse. If this is the case, ScrollMagick will do its best to keep up, and this sometimes causes the window to continue to scroll after you’ve dragged the mouse a distance. The distance scrolled is directly proportional to the distance you move the mouse, so if this happens to you, you can either drag more slowly, or understand the relationship between the distance you move the mouse and the distance the window is scrolled. In any case, the window will stop scrolling immediately upon release of the mouse button.
ScrollMagick has been tested with a wide variety of Macintosh models, and much effort has been made to ensure that it works smoothly with the largest assortment of software possible. Since ScrollMagick interacts with the system on such a low level, however, some software seems almost destined to have a problem with it. Fortunately, it’s easy to keep ScrollMagick from interfering with your work.
If ScrollMagick is giving you trouble in a certain application, you can prevent it from touching that application by adding the application to the exclusion list. (Click on “Exclude...” in the ScrollMagick control panel.) ScrollMagick comes with a default exclusion list that contains software in which it is either known to be incompatible or its functionality is undesirable, such as Adobe’s Acrobat and Photoshop.
1.0.1 (12/28/97)
- Made minor redesigns to the control panel’s interface.
- Added an automated warning about compatibility with Snapz Pro. (Snapz Pro, as well as Smart Scroll, must load before ScrollMagick in order to work with it.)
- Added the ability to set the size of the “edges.”
- Fixed an assortment of small bugs.
- Made a localized Japanese version available, thanks to Osamu Satoh. (osamu@imart.or.jp)
