Apple recently released the “Magic Mouse,” the newest in a long line of unique white mice. The Magic Mouse is by far the most feature-rich apple has ever produced. The core feature of the mouse is its multitouch surface. It allows gestural input to control many applications within OSX. This feature is derived from the current Macbook Pro touch pad, which has up to four-finger gestures. My favorite gesture, and the one I use more than any other, is the two-finger swipe.

When used in a browser, the two-finger swipe will move forward and back between pages. This method is way more efficient than moving the pointer up to the back button for a physical click. I was hoping to replicate some of the Magic Mouse functionality on my own mouse: The Logitech G5.

Out of the box, the scroll wheel tilts side to side to achieve horizontal scrolling in undersized browser windows. I wanted right and left tilts to render forward and back buttons in my browser. With a little googling, one download, and a couple minutes it was ready. And it is dead easy to do.

First download SteerMouse. This program adds many features lacking in the stock OSX preference pane. Below is the main window in SteerMouse. The first step here is to set button actions for your specific browser. I’m currently using Safari, so I chose that from my application list.

Next click on the ‘Tilt Wheel’ tab. This is where we set the button inputs for the tilting action. As you can see, I have already set mine in this picture. It will say ‘Same as Default’ on the first open.

Click on ‘Tilt Left.’ Here is where you add the keystroke. In Safari, page back is executed with ‘cmd + ['

Click OK and try it out. It should be noted that with some mice the command must be assigned to the button list, as seen in the first SteerMouse picture. It should also be noted that 'cmd + [' and 'cmd + ]‘ are page back and page forward, respectively, in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

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