Tuesday, December 24, 2002

uControl Every now and then, you run across a little hunk o' coding goodness that simply makes life better. As I have mentioned in the past, LaunchBar reigns supreme. Like Pogue's Missing Manuals, LaunchBar is the missing app that makes OS X complete. Now I have found the missing kernel extension. uControl easily maps various keys to other keys. For example, uControl can map caps lock to control-- an obvious boon to any unix/emacs geek. However, the single coolest feature of uControl is the ability to turn the trackpad (or mouse) into a scrolling surface. With the feature enabled, holding down the function key causes the trackpad to send scroll up/down/left/right events instead of the normal pointer move events. Since the control is fully two dimensional, the end result is a virtual scrolling surface as opposed to emulating a scroll wheel. Much more useful. Like any kernel extension, there is a risk that uControl is going to render the system unbootable after a system update. uControl protects against this by automatically disabling itself if the system fails to boot. Furthermore, uControl is fully open source. Very nice. 1:01:06 PM