Grabbing window content on Mac OS X like in Google Earth or on the iPhone...

spinnerlys

Hello.



After playing for a while with Google Earth I got quite accustomed to its "grabbing" style of moving around the globe.



That was especially strange when using Safari or the Finder. I was grabbing instead of scrolling.



So my question is: Is there a possibility to have this grabbing feature in OS X, even when it might no be as productive like on the iPhone or in Google Earth?



Thanks for any input...

marvin

I'd love a feature like that. I don't like scrolling all the time nor do I like always having to move to the scrollbar. In Photoshop, you hold space-bar and left-click to pan and in Shake you hold alt and left-click (same as middle mouse button) to pan.



I think the alt-left-click/middle-mouse could be system-wide to use for panning if they disabled being able to click normally with it. If they'd done that, they wouldn't have had to put a ball on the Mighty Mouse.



There is a program I've used before to get extra functionality from input devices called ControllerMate. I tried to set this up and it almost worked. I set it up so that if I middle-clicked, it would check which direction I moved the mouse and it would then generate a scroll either up or down. When I went back to Safari, by just middle-clicking and dragging, I could pan up and down the page. Unfortunately, it wasn't smooth as you can't tell ControllerMate to scroll by the amount you move the mouse, it's a fixed value and so you have to add a repeater. If the repeater is too low, it stutters, if it's too high, it moves to quickly. Plus there's no acceleration control.

spinnerlys

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I found a nice program that allows grabbing like scrolling in Cocoa applications.

Smart Scroll X



Maybe someone can use it, it's okay for me (on an iBook 1GHz). I will see how it works on my faster iMac soon.



PS: I have no affiliation with the company, I just found it via googling "drag in mac os x like on iphone".