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Trackpad Blocker - Stop accidental trackpad "touches"

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Josh:
Have you ever been working on typing a document only to slightly tap the trackpad on your laptop and have it jump you to some other point in the document/code?

Well, this application runs in the tray and every time a key is pressed, it disables the trackpad for .5 seconds to help prevent this issue. GENIUS!

Source

Touchpad Blocker is a handy free tool for laptop owners that will disable the trackpad while you type, so accidental clicks won't move the cursor around.

The program works by effectively disabling mouse events for just half a second, every time you press a key. And so if you accidentally tap the trackpad while in the middle of typing, it probably won't have any effect. But if you've finished, and, say, want to save your document, then the trackpad will start working again half a second after the last keypress and you'll be able to use it as normal.

This default delay won't be right for everyone, of course, so you can tweak it to suit your needs. Increasing the threshold to a second, perhaps, will make it even less likely that accidental clicks will have any effect, but also means you'll have to wait longer after pressing a key before you can use the trackpad. So if that's a more annoying problem then you might like to reduce the delay a little; experiment and see what works for you.
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JavaJones:
I understand the desire for this but in practice such systems drive me *crazy*. I bought a laptop a month or so ago that I ended up returning (a Lenovo, returned for the Intel chipset bug mostly). It had something like this built-in to the touchpad driver/control panel. I tried to reduce the delay time as much as I could but it was still pretty frustrating. I'm the kind of person who keeps their hand on the touch pad most times, using a combination of key presses and touch pad movement and buttons to accomplish most tasks, so I'm often using both at the same time. Systems like this just slow down my work (by a noticeable amount).

So all that is to say that I certainly understand the desire to fix the problem this approach is trying to tackle. I just think this is a bad way to deal with it.

- Oshyan

Stoic Joker:
I'm the kind of person who keeps their hand on the touch pad most times, using a combination of key presses and touch pad movement and buttons to accomplish most tasks, so I'm often using both at the same time. Systems like this just slow down my work (by a noticeable amount).-JavaJones (March 14, 2011, 01:27 PM)
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Don't use a laptop for that sort of thing frequently, but I can easily see (your point) where it could be frustrating. Creating dialogs in MSVS resource editor frequently requires this type of key/mouse combination. Holding Alt key while moving control to keep it from snapping to the border being one I use a lot.

worstje:
Functionality like this can be gold, and it can be total utter crap. Especially if like JavaJones says it can't be turned off completely.

Some laptop touchpads just have very crappy placement compared to the keyboard, whereas other laptops have perfect positioning where it is never an issue. Some touchpads are sensitive to these sorts of large area contacts and/or light touches, whereas others really take a bit more effort to register your fingers. Some support only one finger at a time (getting rarer nowadays), others can recognize multiple fingers.

Combine that with the sort of work you engage in (lots of keyboard shortcuts, simple typing of documents, lots of mouse mucking, etc) to find out that this sort of tool depends on both user and laptop. Trade one of the two for another model ;) and the tool may not be needed any longer.

Thanks for linking this; it is really useful and a typical thing I wish I would have had 3 years ago. :) At least now I know of this sort of tool so if I need it, I can find it!

JavaJones:
Personally I could do without all the touch pad gesture support in exchange for less "jumpy" touch pads...

- Oshyan

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