need to diable right mouse button (special case for elderly person)

  • Thread starter Thread starter James Bond
  • Start date Start date
J

James Bond

Hello. My 80+ year old father has recently decided to get his first
computer. Due to his age (and I suspect lack of playing pong as a child
like I did) he lacks the manual dexterity to use a mouse well. He is
frequently missing the left mouse button and hitting the right, or less
often the middle (wheel) buttons. While he is very slowly getting better
with practice, the frustration level is high for him as a result of this
(he gets very confused, for example, when "strange" contect menues start
popping up).

Since he is not really doing anything that requires the use of the right
mouse button (much less the wheel) I was thinking the simple solution
would be to disable the right and middle buttons, or even better, make
them all send a left button signal.

I cannot find a way to do this in winxp home, however, so I was wondering
if there might be a way to right a little program that would exist as a
daemon and intercept mouse clicks and translate them all to left clicks.
I have a little experience with VB coding but writing a daemon that
operates that closely with hardware is a little over my head. I was
hoping for some pointers in the right direction or suggestions for an
alternate solution.

TIA
 
(ok i admit i have never used xp home, but i can't imagine you cant do it
there)
in xp pro its easy
go to control panel/ mouse (the first tab you get there should be buttons)
you can set the right and wheel button to click there (it wil give a left
click then.

its possible this is something mousedriver specific but it should be there

as to building a program for that. It should be possible , but i don't think
that would be easy as windows programs tend to react to mouse events on
their own forms only.
i used to have a vb6 app that used a windows api to do mouse things (record
movement, clicks and replay them) but that was vb6 and win98 :/.

try the mouse settings first

hope it helps

eric
 
Hi James Bond,
I realize you sincerely want to help you grandfather and I commend you for
that, but there's a hell of a lot that one can do with a context menu that
he'll ultimately be missing out on. I would recommend taking him mouse
shopping and trying to find him a mouse that is comparatively foolproof.
The other thing is that yes he'll have to gain video game like precision.
We as creatures are highly imperfect, we ask our body to the exact same
thing all the time and yet always with a slightly different result. He'll
have to learn to tell his mind that the left button is here and the right
button is there and if he pushes the wrong button the wrong thing will
happen. The other thing you'll have to do is be his patient. Sometimes
just giving people a sense of humor on the matter and or teaching them to
laugh at themselves might not be such a bad idea. Also your mouse task does
indeed sound like a job for James Bond :).
Good luck,
Christian Blackburn
 
Hi James Bond,
Another thing I'd like to mention is that sometimes when you help people
you're actually hindering them. I think writing a mouse button wrapper
would be one of those times.
Adios Amigo,
Christian Blackburn
 
* "Christian Blackburn said:
Another thing I'd like to mention is that sometimes when you help people
you're actually hindering them. I think writing a mouse button wrapper
would be one of those times.
Click to expand...

Why not design a single button mouse?

;-)
 
Herfried,
You some engineers wondered the same thing in the 80s today that disaster is
called a Macintosh mouse :). When I used to work at Microsoft I recall my
boss joking Question:
How can you confuse a mac user?

Answer:
Give them a 3 button mouse!

Cheers,
Christian Blackburn
 
* "Christian Blackburn said:
You some engineers wondered the same thing in the 80s today that disaster is
called a Macintosh mouse :). When I used to work at Microsoft I recall my
boss joking Question:
How can you confuse a mac user?
Click to expand...

ROFL

I remember the time when I had to work on a Mac... Poor...
 
Hi Herfried,
Can you define your acronyms for me:
-SCNR

-ROFL

Thanks,
Christian Blackburn
 
Christian said:
Hi James Bond,
Another thing I'd like to mention is that sometimes when you help
people you're actually hindering them. I think writing a mouse
button wrapper would be one of those times.
Adios Amigo,
Christian Blackburn
Click to expand...

Naah, it's just a set of "Mouse Training Wheels" that will be taken off in a
little while. <g>

-- Mark
 
(ok i admit i have never used xp home, but i can't imagine you cant do
it there)
in xp pro its easy
go to control panel/ mouse (the first tab you get there should be
buttons) you can set the right and wheel button to click there (it wil
give a left click then.

its possible this is something mousedriver specific but it should be
there

as to building a program for that. It should be possible , but i don't
think that would be easy as windows programs tend to react to mouse
events on their own forms only.
i used to have a vb6 app that used a windows api to do mouse things
(record movement, clicks and replay them) but that was vb6 and win98
:/.

try the mouse settings first

hope it helps

eric
Click to expand...

Hmmm, these options are not available on his WinXP Home computer. The
only options under the buttons tab are to swap the right and left buttons
and set the dbl-click speed. Perhaps it is driver specific (he has a
gateway computer and whatever standard mouse driver that WinXP
installed). I will look into the availability of some other drivers.
Thanks for the info.
 
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