JDK-6260940 : Support 'back' and 'forward' mouse buttons on, e.g., Intellimouse Optical
  • Type: Enhancement
  • Component: client-libs
  • Sub-Component: java.awt
  • Affected Version: 5.0
  • Priority: P4
  • Status: Resolved
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • OS: windows_xp
  • CPU: x86
  • Submitted: 2005-04-25
  • Updated: 2011-01-19
  • Resolved: 2009-05-06
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JDK 7
7 b48Fixed
Related Reports
Relates :  
Description
A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
The Intellimouse Optical (and, presumably, other MS mice) include two additional buttons that are not the 'primary,' 'secondary', or 'mouse wheel' buttons.  These are generally mapped to the 'back' and 'forward' functions in Web browsers and Windows Explorer.

As best I can tell, they send distinguished mouse events to the operating system. They do not send keyboard events.  Java receives no MouseEvent and no KeyEvent for these buttons.

JUSTIFICATION :
This would allow developers to provide enhanced functionality that better emulates native platform applications, and provide an enhanced user experience in applications that choose to support these buttons.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
Ideally these buttons could send events to Java that developers could catch.  These could be new buttons in MouseEvent (BUTTON4 and BUTTON5, or BUTTON_BACK and BUTTON_FORWARD), or whatever's easiest.
ACTUAL -
Currently these buttons are not recognized and Java applications do not react in any noticeable way to their being clicked.
###@###.### 2005-04-25 20:26:04 GMT

Comments
SUGGESTED FIX See 6315717.
17-09-2008

EVALUATION On Win32 it calls XBUTTON. Two phisically different buttons generates one kind of event that might be identified by the parameters of that message. See 6315717 for additional info.
19-04-2006