Tactile Trackpad

When I started using SideTrack I got annoyed by not touching it in the right places (oooh!) thus not triggering what I was expecting leading to multiple tapping till I got it right. ARGH! You know what it is like when you have spilt milk/cola/beer/whatever into ya keyboard and keys stick or don’t work properly? Well it is like that. Infuriating.

So to alleviate this a little, I decided to add some tactile’ness to my PowerBook trackpad. Here is a photo of said mod:

vinyl-on-trackpad.jpg

I used silver adhesive vinyl used on cars for those decals you see on back windscreens for example of hotted up cars saying ‘TOS’ or ‘No Fat Chicks’.. uh anyway.. It looks great and helps find the zones.

I had zones marked out for the top corners for back and forward in web browsers and the scroll zone. I tried setting the bottom area for other actions but they where always getting in the way.

The vinyl was better, but the lack of feedback was annoying. I was still tapping too much! I emailed the SideTrack developer, who said Audio feedback is technicaly not possible at the moment.

So after that, I went back to u-Control for scrolling. I still use SideTrack for using the pad button as right click mind. With u-Control, when you hold down a real key (in my case, the function) then move my hand on the trackpad it does the scroll wheel action. Much more reliable, no more accidental bumping, bashing of my trackpad and anyway, I can set qwerty keyboard keystrokes for stuff I need.


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About

Cris Pearson from Melbourne, Australia.
Grew up in George Town, Tasmania.

CEO, co-founder, interaction + interface + graphic
+ web designer at plasq.

We are best known for Comic Life which was bundled with Millions of Apple Macs and now the much lauded, Skitch!.

Non plasq projects:
Loqalize - Open software translation web service
tequp - tech and art meetups
UI Review - Flickr group for peer UI reviews

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