How do Mac users use a three-button mouse?

R

riddle

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When I first switched to Mac OS X from Unix a year or two back, the thing I most missed from X11 was one-click copy and paste, so I ran out and bought a Macally three-button mouse and configured it to come as close to Unix-style copy and paste as I could. What I came up with was two clicks: middle button to copy (cmd-C) and right button to paste (cmd-V).

Recently I had to reinstall the drivers and before reconfiguring I discovered that there seem to be default Mac OS X mappings for the three buttons.

I haven't been able to find much documentation on them. They seem to be context sensitive -- they do different things in my browser, in a Terminal window, in TypePad, etc. And they don't seem to interoperate very well among contexts: for instance, I can't highlight in Firefox and use "paste selection" to paste into Terminal.

Or am I missing something? Are there ways to use the standard Mac approach with something close to the consistency of the Unix way? Is there app-specific functionality (e.g., I see that TypePad's spellcheck offers alternate spellings using button 3) too important to give up for the sake of consistency ease of use across apps?

-- Prentiss Riddle riddle@io.com http://aprendizdetodo.com
 
Right click is the same as cmd-click on a 1 button mouse.

All my mice have scroll wheels, and the scrolling behaves as it does in windows.

The wheel button goes to the next application (as if you did a cmd-tab)

Geoff
 
By the way, the mot efficient way I've found to copy-paste quickly is to highlight the text with the left button, then drag it to where you want to paste it with the left button. No keypresses, minimal fuss.
 
symphonix said:
By the way, the mot efficient way I've found to copy-paste quickly is to highlight the text with the left button, then drag it to where you want to paste it with the left button. No keypresses, minimal fuss.
Click to expand...

Drag'n'drop

Not all software accept it, but that's one of my favorites too !
 
ok. um. try selecting the text, RIGHT CLICK choose COPY and then go into terminal and select PASTE.

this unix theory of pasting without copying is stupid.
 
I actually like the "quick copy" in unix. I've actually gotten spoiled by it and I miss it when it's not there, especially when I head back to Mac OS or WIndows. Now if only I can figure out how to get that working on my StarMax with its pseudo-PS/2 port. :p

For all I know, it's something so easy but I'm just too lazy to bother.. :p
 
Depends on how you want to set them. I have a 5 button mouse and have configured each button to do repetitive tasks that I use frequently.
 
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