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The scroll wheel on a mouse has been invented multiple times by different people unaware of the others' work. Other scrolling controls on a mouse, and the use of a wheel for scrolling both precede the combination of wheel and mouse. The earliest known example of the former is the Mighty Mouse prototype developed jointly by NTT, Japan and ETH Zürich, Switzer
Some scroll wheels can be pressed down, functioning like a button. Depending on the software, this allows both horizontal and vertical scrolling by dragging in the direction desired; when the mouse is moved to the original position, scrolling stops. A few scroll wheels can also be tilted, scrolling horizontally in one direction until released.
Modern scroll wheel on 5-button mouse. (2008) Eric Michelman, a graduate from MIT, is credited with inventing the now commonplace computer input device known as the scroll wheel. Scroll wheels are most often located between the left and right-click buttons on modern computer mice.
The wheel can both be rotated and clicked, thus most mice today effectively have three buttons. In web browsers, clicking on a hyperlink opens it in a new tab, and clicking on a tab itself usually closes it. Some mice have scroll wheels that can be tilted sideways for sideways scrolling; others may contain a second scroll wheel for this purpose.
Universal Scrolling is a software function within IntelliPoint that allows a scroll wheel to work with programs that do not natively support that method of input. If a program supports scroll wheels natively, the Universal Scrolling feature will generally not interfere with the native implementation.
A scroll wheel on a conventional mouse may also be used. Moving the wheel in a desired direction moves the content in the same direction. [16] Most mice contain scroll wheels that only scroll up and down, but some mice contain scroll wheels that allow the user to scroll in any direction (up, down, left or right), including diagonal directions.
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A computer mouse with the most common features: two buttons (left and right) and a scroll wheel (which can also function as a button when pressed inwards) A typical wireless computer mouse. A computer mouse (plural mice, also mouses) [nb 1] is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface