change the function of the mouse wheel button
 

here is what my xorg.conf currently looks like.

# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"

# Identifier and driver

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "Resolution" "180"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Buttons" "5"

EndSection


I have the wheel rolling working just fine and dandy, but when i push the wheel down (as in the click) it likes to just paste whatever is ready to be pasted. it's like i have a CTRL + V on my mouse. handy but i'd rather get it to do the variable speed scroll. ya know, where you click and move the mouse away from where you clicked it and scroll through a page at different speeds.

has anyone accomplished this? it's obviously possible, these are the things that linux was made for.

Um, middle click is supposed to paste in linux. try it in a terminal highlight something then middle click and it should paste whatever you highlighted. I'm not sure what you mean by 'variable speed scroll' but when I'm in firefox if I middle click on the website background it does what you are descibing.

i do see it's advantages but i don't do alot of work in the console so it makes it, too me, a sumwhat useless button.

By variable speed scrool i mean:
you click the wheel as if you would the regular button, then move the mouse down a bit. then web page will start to scrool downwards slowly. move the mouse furthur downwards and the page starts to scroll faster.

does that make more sense?

Like the default behaviour of the middle-click button in Windows? Blech. :p

Even for non-console work it is great. Highlight some text in one window and middle-click in another to paste what you highlighted (no click, drag, ctrl+c, click, click, ctrl+v. With linux it's click, drag, click).

EDIT: OK, I'll be nice and tell you how to do what you want :p
These instructions are for Firefox 1.5+ as that is what I have open. Go to Edit->Preferences. Click on the Advanced tab and then General. Enable Auto-scrolling.

hahaha thanks Daga. this will help me read those long essay pages alot more conveniently. like you said it's only for Firefox right? If I were to still click drag click in Konqueror or anything else but firefox, it should stay as the linux default right?

could this package be what you are looking for?

I used it to assign functions to the extra buttons that my dear trackball has. It's quite easy to configure. Just read the man page.

check out Opera browser. It will do that.

I didn't even know you needed this on. I don't remember turing it on. :) If you middle-click in a text input box it still pastes.

Yep, it only affects Firefox to my knowledge. I haven't played with the settings of Konqueror very much (prefer Gnome ;))