Two fingers to the trackpad problem

About a week ago I wrote in a previous entry about a problem I was having with the trackpad. In a nutshell, the problem is that the feature in the system preferences to "ignore accidental trackpad input" makes it it so that the pointer can be slow to respond to the trackpad after typing on the keyboard. It's like it takes it a while to realise that you've stopped using the keyboard and have switched to useing the trackpad. I found it much more responsive after switching off the 'ignore feature', but was then having problem with accidental input. Well duh!

I figured I could probably train myself to use to using the keyboard without ever nudging the trackpad but after several days of trying and numerous accidental closures of windows, selections, deselections and other fun things, I gave up on that idea. The MacBook's trackpad is rather sensitive and you really do need to have the ignore accidental trackpad input feature switched on when you are typing.

Alas there is no hotkey to toggle it on/off so I wondered if I might be able to do it programatically, with a widget perhaps. What I needed was a way of saying "Hey, I really do want to use the trackpad now". Tapping the trackpad or clicking the button would not be a good move as nine times out of ten I'd end up clicking on something I didn't want to. But then it dawned on me: two fingers!

You can use two fingers on the MacBook's trackpad to scroll the screen content and let's face it, you'd be hard pressed to 'nudge' the trackpad in a manner that could be confused with a 'request' to scroll... and it works. The MacBook does indeed recognise and respond to a two fingers when it might be inclined to ignore one as accidental input. I'm finding that a horizontal scroll is best because most of the time, what I have in the window is full width so it doesn't actually scroll, it just 'breaks' the cursor out of 'keyboard mode'.