4 free ways to tweak your mouse and increase productivity

Posted on January 13, 2008 at 8:29 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Tweak Windows XP & Vista series!

  1. 4 free ways to tweak your mouse and increase productivity
  2. Tweak Windows Vista for free with MZ Vista Force
  3. Tweak Windows XP settings with TweakUI
  4. Tweak Windows Vista - Performance, registry, and Internet tweaks
  5. Optimize, tweak and tune Windows XP using Tune-Up Utilities 2008
  6. Tweak, disable or turn off UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista

Ever heard of tweaking your mouse? Just about everyone has a desktop and along with that a mouse to perform any task on the computer. We spend so much time using a mouse, but usually spend no time trying to make sure we are getting all the juice we can from that little controller!

However, you can greatly increase your productivity with a few simple mouse tweaks in Windows or via some third party apps. I’m going to go through a couple of apps that I’ve run across over the last few years that make my mouse into something more than just a roaming pointer!

mouse

How to Copy and Paste Faster

Most people don’t use their mouse for copying and pasting, it’s simply too much clicking. If you’re like me, you just highlight and then press CNTR + C and CNTR + P to copy and paste.

Not so with True X-Mouse Gizmo! This nifty little free program can help you copy with your mouse, paste with your mouse, focus on windows, etc without clicking, raise and lower windows, and lots more!

It has a tons of settings you can configure, but it’s not for the faint of heart! Just reading through the help page, it’s definitely a little technical. Give it a shot though!

How to Add Commands and Functionality to Right-Click Options

Everyone knows that when they right-click on something, it gives them a few menu options that are related to whatever they right-clicked on. You can add more functionality to your right-click by using a free program called ClickZap.

ClickZap will allow to run a specific action when you double right-click on your mouse. You can setup any action you like, such as shutting down the computer, muting the volume, lock your computer, minimize windows, etc. It also works when you triple right-click!

Navigate Back and Forward in Browser with your Mouse

Rocker is a cool free program that adds mouse rocker navigation to many popular windows programs, allowing you to, for example, navigate forwards and backwards in your web browser by “rocking” your fingers across the mouse keys. You can read more from the link on what “rocking” actually is!

All-In-One Gestures is a Firefox addon that allows you to draw on your browser window and perform a certain action on the drawn part. You can go back a page by drawing a line to the left and vice versa. You can draw actions for closing tabs, reloading a page, etc.

Tweak Your Mouse Scroll Wheel

This is not really an app, but I thought I’d throw it in anyway! Every time your scroll in Windows, the mouse scrolls 4 lines at a time. If you want to edit this value so it scrolls more or less, you can edit a key in the registry.

1. Click on the Start Button, click on Run, and type in regedit and hit Enter.
2. Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.
3. Scroll to the bottom and edit WheelScrollLines. Set this to a lower value for a more sensitive scroll wheel and to a larger value for less sensitive.
4. Reboot.

That’s it for now! There are many other ways to tweak a mouse, so I’ll write another post on that later! Any other tips that you use that you would want to share? Post a comment! Enjoy! Source FriedBeef

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6 Responses to “4 free ways to tweak your mouse and increase productivity”

  1. Pioneer Base said on : January 13th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Easy Go Back is an Internet Explorer add-on that allows you to conveniently navigate the browser back and forward. Now you can navigate Internet Explorer back and forward with intuitive mouse movements.

    you can get it here http://www.browsertools.net/Ea.....index.html


  2. John said on : January 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    I think you meant to say CNTR + V for pasting. The shortcut CNTR + P brings up the print dialogue.


  3. akishore said on : January 13th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    John, I don’t know why I always do that! It’s definitely CNTR + V, but I keep typing CNTR + P! No idea why!


  4. Daniel Mcgonagle said on : January 15th, 2008 at 5:12 am

    Interesting info, I never knew about it until now. Thanks for sharing
    this valuable information.Great post. Keep it up!


  5. fr33mumia said on : February 7th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    Very interesting tweaks for your clicking habits d-_-b


  6. Ulf Topf said on : April 7th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Another simple way of “tweaking” a mouse is to use the scroll wheel click (i.e. pressing down on the wheel) to program it for whatever command you want.
    This is available in most mouse driver software set-up. I have programmed my optical mouse wheel-click as the BACK command. This works in internet browsers and all other programs that have a BACK button! Saves a lot of time when browsing - no seeking with the back button in a far away corner of the screen with the cursor………..


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