– The longer you hold it down, the faster it goes

One of the nice things about the traditional mouse scroll wheel is that it can scroll at a range of speeds; it is a variable speed scroll, mainly because you are in control of the speed of scrolling (based on your finger actions.) Although there is certainly some *work* to using a mouse scroll wheel, it remains the most popular method of scrolling, very likely because of its analogue performance of on-demand scrolling speed change. It converts the kinetic energy of your finger to rate of speed of the scroll.

We like implementations like the scroll wheel that can dynamically respond to the users ergonomic input, it’s a recipe for good use and ergonomics although as with any manual input, here always exists the possibility of performance fatigue and even injury from overuse.

Since GWS footpedals move scrolling tasks to the feet, we have added a new scrolling implementation called the “Gas Pedal Scroll” that provides scroll acceleration similar to (but easier than) the experience of using a mouse scroll wheel.

Enabled by IDI™ technology, (the implementation is simply a pair of macros you can load to your pedals) the Gas Pedal Scroll provides an accelerating scroll with low effort foot operation. The implementation works like a gas pedal in that the longer you hold the button down the faster you will scroll (go).

The implementation is even more literally from driving experience than you might expect. It has 4 “gears”, and as the time duration of your pedal press increases, it “shifts” through these higher gears, shifting the scrolling speed faster as it does so. You keep to a reading speed by letting the button up occasionally, and you accelerate into hyper scrolling speed by just keeping the pedal down. The accelerating scroll works for Fragpedals, Omnipedals, and the Omnimouse.

Copy the Gas Pedal Scroll files to your PC

The files that you will need to install the Gas Pedal Scroll are under the Support/Macro Library tab at Gamingmouse.com. We’ll copy the files in the zip to the \macro and \html subdirectories of the IDI Device home folder and you’ll be ready to scroll.

If you used the default install locations, these are the IDI Device home folders:

The Gas Pedal Scroll Files.zip file contains 5 files: 

Copy the (3) macro files to the \macro folder, and the html file to the \html folder.

Adding the Gas Pedal Scrolling macros to your library

Next, with your IDI Device plugged in and the Configurator open, select the Configuration that you would like to use the Gas Pedal Scroll with by clicking on the Configuration List box, then click on the Configuration drop down menu and select Properties.

When the Properties form opens (see above) click on the Macro File dropdown list and select Gas Pedal Scroll Files.txt. This makes the gas pedal scroll macros available to select for the Configuration.

Now, select Macro from the button assignment drop down and assign the macros to the buttons of your choice. When you click on either macro, the related help file will open and display in the right hand window.  Check the help file for further instruction on using the scroll and for information on how to edit the macro to tune it to your preference.  Press the Save button to save the macros to the device memory.

NOTE: To use other available macros with this configuration, open the Configuration properties form again and select another macro list file. You can swap macro list files as needed for button assignments.

Using the Gas Pedal Scroll – Rules and Tips

• Shifting Parameters – Every 2 seconds that the pedal remains down, it shifts to a faster scrolling speed, with a total of 4 “gears/speeds”. The first 2 speeds are both “reading” speeds, but the 3 and 4^th are quite fast and move through text rows quickly. After 6 seconds of the pedal down, you are in 4^th gear scrolling at 60 times the reading scrolling speed.
• Mouse Control Panel Wheel Line Scrolling Setting – The Windows Control Panel Mouse Control module supports user control of the default operating-system-level scroll speed.  Changing this setting affects all scrolling input to the machine. The Windows default for scrolling speed is 3 lines per scroll wheel “click”. You should experiment setting this lower to 2 or 1 if the basic reading scroll rate seems too fast. 
• Controlling speed – This is fairly intuitive; you keep the scroll to a slow reading speed by releasing the button every 2-3 seconds. When you want to speed through some long material, you hold the pedal down for durations of 4 seconds or more.
• Scrolling pedals pad spacing – Since scrolling frequently involves quick changes between scroll directions, you might want to consider moving the pedals on the pad that you use for scrolling, closer together. The pedal and button assemblies can be easily moved to one of 5 spacings that put the pedals center-to center from a close as 2 1/8” to as wide as 5 1/4”. This should allow any foot size to contact both pedals at once. From this position, either button can be pressing by simply rocking your foot from side to side rather than moving it. This is very fast and natural; many users move the pedals together on both pads to replace any foot movement with a rocking action.

Try the Gas Pedal accelerating scroll and see how it works for you.  Let us know if you like the implementation and/or have any suggestions for improvements or tweaks, your feedback is much appreciated.

Good Work Systems Customer Service Team