I have been using this for the past 6 months and its great, though I do wonder if it is causing some kernel panics. However I still dont know why Apple doesnt improve its trackpad software as its just a synaptics touchpad - most if not all other laptops using these trackpads have these features.

One thing i miss from my vaio days is that I could asign gestures to do things. Back and forward were a simple stroke in the right direction along the top edge. Minimise, maximise, hide all were directional strokes from just one corner. It be so nice to have exposé work from gestures and not hot corners. Gestures just feel better and the ammount of false positives are really small.

And while I am at it, I want my two button mouse!! ;)

I keep trying Sidetrack because of success stories like this, but it just makes my trackpad bug out. I callibrate and everything, but it just doesn’t like me or my pismo…

I’ve been using Sidetrack for a while too. I have the corners bound to middle click and the exposé actions instead. I’m switching between shell windows, NetNewsWire, a browser, vim and VoodooPad too often to waste corners on application specific actions. And since I’m deciding between Omniweb, Safari, and Firefox right now, there aren’t really common keys for all three. (Annoyingly, Firefox can use side-to-side scrolling, but it goes through the back/forward history, not tabs)

BTW, “Trackpad tap for left click during login??? allows you to tap the trackpad to do a left click, just like “Use trackpad tap to…” on the first page of options. Sidetrack just has to pull some extra tricks to do it on the login screen is all.

Oh, and Firefox doesn’t support middle click on OSX. So stupid.

I’m glad you wrote this entry, because I’ve had Sidetrack installed for a couple of weeks already, but I hadn’t actually enabled it in the System Prefs. I guess I got sidetracked.

By the way, if you happen to use a different keyboard layout such as dvorak, you need to map the key bindings to the physical key. (For example, to map a corner of the trackpad to close a tab (Cmd-W), you need to use Cmd-comma.)

sidetrack is the one thing I couldn’t live w/o on osx…ok, ONE OF THE THINGS - there are a bunch.

the tap takes some getting used to - and it drives people nuts when they ‘drive’ on my pb and keep getting context menus. But I love it. works perfect for me and my style of computing.

I’ve also grown to love the hot corners of the trackpad. I actually set mine to ‘previous song’ (in itunes, duh) ‘next song’ ‘copy’ and ‘paste’. it becomes second nature. such a time saver!!!

Right on, Nick.

It’s funny because it’s made me install Cocoa Gestures again. I want this functionality (or something like it) everywhere now.

I also use Desktop Manager to have multiple desktops on my 12” PowerBook G4. I defined the corner taps in SideTrack like this:

TAP IN UPPER CORNERS: Moves current desktop view to previous or next desktop.

TAP IN LOWER CORNERS: Moves window that you are hovering over to the previous or next desktop.

This combo has been REALLY helpful! Not to mention the ability to scroll using the trackpad…

For those of you who have tried SideTrack and maybe aren’t finding it to your liking (I got kernel panics from it, too, although that was a LONG time ago), I’ve found that uControl’s fn-scrolling is exactly what I wanted from my trackpad. My left pinky is always hovering over the fn key anyway, so a quick press lets me scroll in any direction with the trackpad. It’s a good alternative to look into. Isn’t it nice to finally have lots of options for good Mac software these days?

Oddly, I had SideTrack set up in nearly the same way, though as I’d also been driven nuts by the tap-to-right-click, I put that in the upper right corner, and middle click in the upper left. For me, at least, that’s more useful than closing all other tabs.