#1: Robyn Broyles (ginkgo100) on Aug 5, 2009

I have not been able to find the answer to this question, so here it is:

Occasionally, as I'm solving a puzzle, I'll move the cursor a certain way and the puzzle clues will suddenly change their arrangement. Most of the time, they end up at the right instead of the left side of the grid. Once they stayed on the left, but aligned to the left instead of the default right-align. My brain is set in its ways and protests when I try to solve a puzzle with rearranged clues, but I don't know what I did to cause it, nor how to reverse it! I have to save and reload the puzzle. What am I doing and how do I fix it?

I use a laptop with a touchpad instead of a mouse, and I suspect that has something to do with it. If you touch the pad quickly, it counts as a left click. I think I'm somehow clicking and dragging, but I can't figure out how to reproduce it.

I know that the arrow keys will move the clues left/right, up/down with alignments too. So if I load a puzzle and hit the left arrow key, the clue will left align on the left of the grid. If I would have hit the right arrow key, the clues would left align on the right of the grid. If I hit the right arrow again, they will right align on the right of the grid. Perhaps accidentally hitting an arrow key?

Gator's right - whatever you're doing on your touchpad is the equivilant of using one of the arrow keys. You can move the clues from the left side to the right side of the puzzle or from top to bottom. You can also shift the justification to the left or right (or top or bottom) with in the clue area. I find this helps when I've completed the first column or top row and want to gray out all those clues with one drag of the mouse. Other than that I seldom use it.

On some larger puzzles that don't fit completely in the screen it's sometimes helpful to move the clues to the end of the puzzle you're working on.

Thanks for the tips!

I hadn't been aware that there were computers where the touchpad pretended to be arrow keys. How much of an annoyance is this? Do I need an option to turn of the arrow key function of map them to different keys?

I wasn't aware my touchpad could do that, either! And I don't know how to reproduce the subtle touch that causes it. But now that I know how to fix it, it's not an annoyance at all. I wouldn't worry about changing anything.

I have noticed this behavior recently when using my touchpad, but it is not an annoyance though. I just find it odd that the touchpad can replicate arrow key functionality.

Maybe you're touching the "scroll" in the touchpad. The bottom of the touchpad scrolls left and right and the right side of the touchpad scrolls up and down.

I thought this was a bug the first time I ran into it! The "Back" button on my mouse will trigger a left-arrow event in Firefox(Win XP). The "forward" will move the clues right.

The same mouse works properly in Safari(also winXP). Of course that became its own problem when I wanted the clues to go to the left and clicked the button! :O

Maybe I shouldn't have put these functions on the arrow keys. Some people's computers seem wonky about arrow keys. But it's not obvious what to do instead. Hmmm.....

I just changed mouses. The previous was a Logitech. Now I have a M$ mouse and the back button works as a back button. Nothing else has changed.

I used the default windows driver (Human interface device) for both. (What a surprise that M$ has hidden hooks for its own devices!)

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