Strange Mighty Mouse problem in Word

[dfritzin]

Has anyone else seen this problem with Mighty Mouse in Word 2004? I
will be scrolling down a fairly long document, using the scroll ball.
Suddenly, the scrolling will stop, and using the scroll ball won't move
me through the document at all. However, if I click anywhere in the
document, or on the scroll bar, I will quickly move through the
document, including moving up and down. It appears that the "scroll
ball" movements were in memory, but the program wouldn't execute them
until I click on the document. I don't see this in any other programs,
including opening the same document in Pages.

Oh yes, PM G5/dual 2.0 (RevA), 10.4.3 (though I also saw this behavior
in 10.4.2), with 1.0 Gig RAM. I am running Word 2004 with all available
updates, and, as far as I know, I am running the latest version of the
Mighty Mouse driver.

Does anyone else see this problem, and does anyone know what is going
on?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Yes, we all see this problem, and we do know what is going on

You are quite correct: the scroll events are being queued in memory, and
Word can't see them until you click the mouse. Keystrokes (of which the
mouse click is one) are processed as higher-priority interrupts. This has
the effect of clearing the logjam in memory and allowing all the scroll
events to come through.

This was a design change in SP 2 for Word 2004. The change redirects
computing power in favour of some operations (e.g. Typing) at the expense of
other operations (e.g. Scrolling).

There's no clear right answer here: it depends a lot on your individual
working style whether the change makes it better or makes it worse you. For
myself, the change makes things slightly worse when reading and editing
(which involves a lot of scrolling). On the other hand, you should find
that typing and printing have sped up a bit (because Word is getting
interrupted less often by the mouse events).

I find that Word 2004 is indeed snappier for most things in my daily work.
The scrolling pauses do happen more noticeably now, but I know the cure
(click the mouse) and I find myself using the page key rather than scroll
more often.

So there you have it. You're not imagining things: it is a change, and it
makes things better for most people most of the time. But you don't get
anything for nothing in this world: there are times when the change will
make things worse for some users for some operations.

Hope this helps

Has anyone else seen this problem with Mighty Mouse in Word 2004? I
will be scrolling down a fairly long document, using the scroll ball.
Suddenly, the scrolling will stop, and using the scroll ball won't move
me through the document at all. However, if I click anywhere in the
document, or on the scroll bar, I will quickly move through the
document, including moving up and down. It appears that the "scroll
ball" movements were in memory, but the program wouldn't execute them
until I click on the document. I don't see this in any other programs,
including opening the same document in Pages.

Oh yes, PM G5/dual 2.0 (RevA), 10.4.3 (though I also saw this behavior
in 10.4.2), with 1.0 Gig RAM. I am running Word 2004 with all available
updates, and, as far as I know, I am running the latest version of the
Mighty Mouse driver.

Does anyone else see this problem, and does anyone know what is going
on?

Thanks in advance.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410