There’s a new feature in the Mac OS X 10.4.8 Keyboard & Mouse’s “Mouse” System Preferences panel: “Zoom using scroll wheel.” The same feature is also available for trackpad users who have the “Use two fingers to scroll” option turned on,” John Gruber notes for Daring Fireball.
The new feature is “on” by default, with the “Zoom using scroll ball while holding” modifer key set to the “Control” key (you can change this key if you like).
(Note: Some Daring Fireball readers report seeing this feature prior to 10.4.8; apparently it shipped with the driver for the new Wireless Mighty Mouse, and perhaps also shipped in the version of 10.4.7 that shipped with some recent Macs.)
More over on Daring Fireball here.
MacDailyNews Note: Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar (released July, 2002) introduced the “Zoom” feature designed for people who need the ability to zoom in and out at will, which covers pretty much all of us. More options for other accessibility capabilities are in the “Universal Access” pane of System Preferences.
As usual:
• [Command,Option,8] toggles Zoom on and off. That’s “Apple, Option, Eight” in English.
• [Command,Option,=] zooms in, centering on the cursor position when Zoom is on. “Apple, Option, Equal Sign”
• [Command,Option,-] zooms out. “Apple, Option, Minus Sign”
Related articles:
Mac OS X lets you zoom in and out on your screen with ease – August 15, 2006
How to zoom in and out in Jaguar with ease – September 25, 2002
It’s kind of cool, but what’s the point?
THIS HAS BEEN POSSIBLE SINCE THE LAST VERSION
Hmmm…I was doing it wrong, thinking it was the same old key combo (cmd option) and the scroll wheel. It works using just control and the scroll wheel but it still doesn’t show up in the mouse prefs. Ampar, does it show up in your prefs?
It was working great with Mighty Mouse then it stoped working. Can’t egt it working again, even after restart.
This is nice and all but how about a useful mouse function like being able to assign keyboard commands to right click? We still have to use shareware to be able to do this most basic of functions.
ndelc: Yes it does. And it let’s you change the key.
It works! Sweeeet! Duuuud! Sweeeet!
And the other one that’s sweet for when designes insist on having microscopic sized text..is Command and + to increase font sizes for the whole page.
So much for all the anti-Apple-spinsters who always insist that OSX updates are just to fix securoty flaws. It all just gets better and better.
Vista can’t see the tail lights of OSX anymore…
And I just thought my mouse was weirding out when it started doing that — usually when I’ve been using it a lot; I’ll have trouble with the buttons too. Blowing into the scroll ball clears it up, so it probably means time for a cleaning…
So, just like lots of Windows applications then…
Wonder why so many Mac fanboys feel it necessary to bash Windows. Seems if it were so inferior to OSX then no mention would be needed. It would just be that obvious. I’m a mac -user AND a windows user, they both have VERY irritating qualities about them…so leave it at that and stop acting like insecure little bitches that need to convince themselves that their OS is better than such and such’s OS.
Ok.
FWIW, Windows user have enjoyed zoom scroll wheel functionality since the stone age. Not just “blow up the screen size” zoom but real zoom.