For the past few years I’ve used a Logitech MX310 mouse. It’s pretty great!
See that little circular button below the scroll wheel, though? If you install Logitech’s horrible drivers you can get it to pop up a makeshift application switcher, or do Vista’s dumb Flip 3D thing that no one uses. It’s basically useless, so I removed the driver and the functionality. And it’s been sitting there. Bugging me. For years.
Until finally I got sick and tired of having it sit there and have no purpose (I’m a minimalist by nature), so I looked up some way of gettin’ it to DO something. Seems that someone beat me to the punch and made this awesome hack for Logitech’s drivers called uberOptions (the site of which seems down). Suddenly the little button was given hundreds of possible functions – I told it to open up a little VBS I programmed which plays/pauses iTunes (sup Shiranne, we coded it for our DJ app).
Can you say easiest way to play/pause iTunes possible? Because I can. I am very happy.
That is exactly the mouse I use.
lo
lo
lo
looooooooooooooogitech
check out http://itunescontrol.com/
I use it to manipulate my iTunes, and the guy actually responds to e-mail which is nice.
For me, I bound that key to work as my VOIP key in Teamspeak and other games
iTunesControl is nice, but I already have a script that controls iTunes that I wrote myself. Uses the same API as iTunesControl, and it doesn’t need to run in the background.
Do you also use uberOptions?
My microsoft keyboard has a full set of multimedia buttons that work in every app I’ve ever used to play multimedia, and my mouse buttons came stock fully customizeable. oops, microsoft made a quality product.
This is true, Microsoft’s mice are quite good. I might buy one if this mouse ever goes bad or whatever, which I don’t forsee for a while!
bam i knew my itunes idea was way better than your fast food one ohhhh
see how useful i am? i’m going to take all the credit for the idea on that one since i never actually coded anything (that was all you man)
You replied to something I said on binsybaby’s LJ, and I just thought I’d check out your LJ (like a weirdo) and noticed you also watch fantasygoat’s LJ, haha! And you live close to me (compared to most random internet people, that is)
Anyway… I have buttons on the front of my laptop (play, pause, forward, etc.) that work with media player, but not with iTunes and that makes me super sad… 🙁 So, I can see the value in a nice little button on your mouse..
Hmm, that’s too bad. My Dell Inspiron’s buttons control iTunes, but only when it’s selected, and that sort of defeats the purpose.
Yeah, I have a Dell Inspiron, too… and yeah, it only works when iTunes is selected…
I used to have that mouse, it served me well.
~JimmY
Let me know if you want to talk; needless to say, I know how that shit goes.