The Modeless Automatic Keyboard Mouse for Notebook and Laptop Computers
Why a keyboard mouse?
Do you ever want to move something on the screen by exactly one pixel? Or two? Or three?
Or line up a window or object precisely where you want it?
That's hard to do with any pointing device, but it's easy with a keyboard mouse.
If you have a desktop computer running Windows, you can enable
MouseKeys
and turn your numeric keypad into a keyboard mouse. Then just press a key on the
numeric pad to move the mouse cursor pixel by pixel in any direction.
Why JKLmouse?
Alas, MouseKeys works poorly on notebook computers. Without a dedicated numeric pad,
MouseKeys has to use the numeric pad that is overlaid on the QWERTY keyboard in some
notebook computers. So, you have to switch MouseKeys on and off, or at least toggle
Num Lock, every time you want to use the keyboard mouse.
JKLmouse is designed for notebook computer keyboards, and it's modeless.
There's no special "JKLmouse mode" to switch on and off.
JKLmouse doesn't interfere with normal keyboard operation—it's ready to use all the time.
Best of all, it's easy to seamlessly combine normal
TrackPoint
or touchpad use with JKLmouse:
start with the pointing device for large movements and then use JKLmouse to nail down the exact pixel location.
How it works
After you install JKLmouse,
simply press the mouse button as you normally would to
start dragging something. You can still use the TrackPoint or touchpad, and you can also use
any of these keys:
- The arrow keys
- The numeric keypad (if you have one)
- The home row keys for left and right hand: SDF and JKL, and the keys above and below them:
Want to move the mouse without pressing a mouse button?
Hold down the Caps Lock key and the JKLmouse keys all work
as long as Caps Lock is down. (Don't worry, this won't turn on the Caps Lock mode.)
I wrote JKLmouse to use on my ThinkPads,
where I can use both the TrackPoint and JKLmouse without moving
my hands from the home row. It works fine with touchpads too. I don't recommend
using it with a desktop keyboard and mouse, since you'd be likely to move the mouse
while holding the button down - which would defeat the fine pixel control that JKLmouse provides.
System requirements
JKLmouse works on Windows 95, 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, XP, and 32-bit Vista.
It works with Vista x64, but only with 32-bit applications. (64-bit version coming soon.)
JKLmouse uses only a small amount of memory and does not slow your computer down.
Known Bugs in version 0.9
-
JKLmouse does not work in a VMware virtual machine.
-
JKLmouse has a mouse acceleration feature, where the mouse pointer speeds up
as you hold down a cursor movement key. This doesn't work consistently; in many
applications the mouse moves at a constant speed without accelerating.
-
On Vista x64, JKLmouse works only with 32-bit applications.
-
The uninstall leaves a JKLmouse shortcut in your Startup folder.
If you uninstall JKLmouse, please delete that shortcut manually and restart
your computer to make sure the program is closed and fully uninstalled.
User comments
"This is just fantastic!"
"Just what the Doctor ordered!!! Works great!"
"A winner for me too!!"
Source code
I plan to release the JKLmouse source code under an Open Source license.
Contact
Please contact Michael Geary
with any questions or problems.
Thanks!
Thank you for trying JKLmouse!
