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Comment by xenonite | Hacker News Reader

This leaves room for a trackball that requires the pointer finger to move the pointer. This way of pointing feels much more precise, and leaves the strong thumb to thumb the main button.

And for the question on scrolling: let me press an additional button that enables scrolling with the ball, both horizontally and vertically.

The Logitech TrackMan Marble would, in my opinion, be a wonderful example for such a trackball. (Here, the described scrolling behavior can be configured with the Logitech driver on Windows, with Karabiner on macOS, and by mapping a scroll modifier button in xorg.conf setting in X, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Logitech_Marble_Mouse#S... )

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> And for the question on scrolling: let me press an additional button that enables scrolling with the ball, both horizontally and vertically.

I mentioned this in another comment, but on macOS, there's a utility called SteerMouse (http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/index.html) that apparently supports chording for scrolling with the ball and is compatible with a number of different trackballs.

Sadly, I've found that that particular feature isn't working properly on Catalina with my Huge, but I contacted the dev and he said he's looking into it. So fingers crossed...

In my experience, it's even more precise to use multiple fingers at once. I use two or three on symmetrical trackballs like that.

Using software for a scroll button like that is often annoyingly flaky and inconsistent in practice, as too much software isn't expecting it or tries to do its own special thing (websites in particular for the latter). I haven't used a trackball that does it in hardware, but that may run into issues too, as a lot of software is built to scroll in whole numbers of lines, and so feels unresponsive to more precise scrolling methods (e.g. scroll button or touch screen).

Kensington Expert Mouse, designed to point with your fingers.

The ball has weight and diameter for both speed and accuracy, surrounded by a ring for scrolling.

// See mkl’s sibling comment, also elsewhere in this thread.

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