September 30, 2006
Mystery of the mysterious pointer box solved
Posted Sep. 30, ’06, 11:19 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Troubleshooting
Reader Manuel Chalbaud wrote in response to the 10.4.8 update:
Hi, since updating to 10.4.8 on my PowerPc, there is an anoying black box surrounding my pointer, any ideas why??
Glad you asked Manuel. Daniel Jalkut ran into the same thing. Even before reading his post, I had an intuition that it might have to do with Universal Access. Basically, the rectangle is meant to help you know what you’ll be zooming into if you use that feature. The fix is quite easy.
- Open System Preferences
- Go to Universal Access pane.
- Switch to the “Seeing” tab.
- Click the “Options” button for the Zoom section.
- Turn off the “Show preview rectangle” checkbox.
As a bonus tidbit, you can play with scrolling just by using the scroll wheel. Hold down option control and scroll. Fun, fancy, and sure to impress your friends.
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Isn't it and scroll wheel to zoom? At least, that's how it is on my iMac.
Ooops. I need to engage the brain before I start typing. Fixed.
You can also use the scrolling trackpad on a recent mac laptop: two fingers + Control key = zoom in and out.
Is this new in 10.4.8? Because no one told me this
Before this I was using cmd+option+8 and then plus and minus to zoom in and out.
PS: How do you guys type so that the option symbol appears in the text? and also the cmd and rest of the keys?
Zooming using a modifier key and scroll wheel (or two-finger touchpad scrolling) was a feature added with the driver for the wireless Mighty Mouse. 10.4.8 includes the new driver, similar to how two-finger touchpad clicking was added in a previous update.