Mini-Review: ScrollMagick is a Keeper

Mini-Review: ScrollMagick is a Keeper -- I downloaded and tried out ScrollMagick 1.0, a shareware utility by Eden Sherry. Macs Only! announced its availability on Saturday. ScrollMagick allows one to scroll up or down (not horizontally) in a window by simply placing the mouse pointer in the upper or lower 10% of the window--no clicking on arrowheads or grabbing of scroll buttons needed. This mode is called "hover scroll." The hover scroll rate is controlled by the location of the pointer, i.e. it increases closer to the edge of the window. For many windows the slowest scroll rate is just below my reading speed so a long document can be read as it scrolls by without having to do anything else beyond placing the mouse pointer in the correct location, an easy task. The other mode is called "grab scroll." This mode can be set for the edges or the whole document and then only if a certain selectable key is pressed at the same time. Applications can be excluded from being affected by ScrollMagick in either scroll mode. ScrollMagick worked with every window that I tried with several exceptions--Microsoft Word 6.01a, Microsoft Excel 5.01, Acrobat 3.0, ResEdit and AdTran's Express Terminal Adapter contol panel. Acrobat, ResEdit and Word were excluded in the original ScrollMagick configuration. When I deleted Word from the excluded list, I discovered that it had conflicts. ScrollMagick worked fine with three other word processors: WordPerfect 3.5.4, ClarisWorks 5.0 and SimpleText 1.4. I added the AdTran control panel to the excluded list and the conflicts with ScrollMagick disappeared. ScrollMagick is $10 shareware and at that price it is a keeper! I registered my copy.