HOW TO: ALPS touchpad with circle scroll and back and forward in firefox

Hello,

I have been looking to make my alps pad better and with some info i found on here i was able to do just that. now i have "back/forward" slide gestures and circle scrolling, in firefox!! this will also enables alot more things.

first of all thanks to fonduekid for letting us know of the new drivers.
and to SpotMe for the regedit info.

to start off go HERE, and download that driver.

Install, restart.

after windows restarts run regedit
look for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Alps\APoint"
with in that folder look for "UseCustomGUI"
double click and change the value data to "0"
close regedit
open mouse properties and you will have all the features unlocked. circle scrolling are within the dell tab and the back/forward is under gestures tab.


Unfortunately Alps still will not recognize Firefox. To be able to use the "back and forward" slide gesture you will have to go here and download a firefox addon called nightly tester tools.
once installed, with in firefox go to tools>addons and click on options for Nightly tester tools.
the first check box is to "Use Custom Title" check that
and type in "Netscape" with a capitol N
And you are all done. if done properly you should have full features of the mouse. There will be times that back/forward wont work do to a very long title bar, but most of the time it works great.

once again thanks to fonduekid and SpotMe

-pyr0000


UPDATE :
if you want smoother scrolling in firefox i would suggest one of these add-ons
smoothwheel
yet another smooth scrolling

 

Hey there... Nice information, thanks..

But for me I have those features without changing the registry value... meaning, I still have '1" for "UseCustomGUI" and I still see those scrolling features and the circle scrolling... Anyways.. I never understand computer' n software' fully..

 

but you dont have the back/forward option.

 

Ah.. missed that point.. yeah, this regedit gave that back/forward option.. thanks again anyways.. *bookmarked this thread*

 

Thank you for letting me know there were new drives. i had been using some old drivers from some workstation but the new ones are much better

 

I assume back/forward is for like moving between webpages? I enabled in options, but it seems to just scroll as before. Is there a special gesure?

 

in first post

 

Can't you just install Synaptics drivers?

 

yes but you not be able to scroll or anything.

 

So you can only enable the back and forward with firefox or it will do it with everything?

 

OK I tried this and I get a popup that says failed to load launcher.dll. I was able to see the full features as long as I don't click OK on the popup but as soon as I do the tray icon for the touchpad goes away and I loose all my features. I tried removing and reinstalling the driver twice and editing the registry but it keeps happening.

 

humm not to sure what that is about...
in a quick search i dont seem to find launcher.dll
odd

 

It seems to be part of the easy launcher. when i right click on the touchpad in the task tray that is one of my options, mouse properties or easy launcher. do you have that? It is also one of the tabs under mouse properties. When I click on that it says easy launcher could not be loaded.

 

well I dont see any easy launcher either... are you using some external mouse settings software?

 

no and i never saw it before changing the registry. i just did a clean vista 64 install last week and the only other thing i have installed is the previous touchpad driver listed in the 64 bit drivers thread. I have looked it up online and easy launcher is part of alps software. it almost seems like using the stock alps GUI is trying to pull up the easy laucher but the dell version left out the easy launcher software. i don't know why i am getting it and you guys aren't.

 

maybe it is part of vista 64?

 

easy launcher is definitely part of the alps software. i have read about it online. like i said i bet the stock GUI is trying to pull it up but the dell version doesn't include it. i just can't figure out why it is not coming up for you guys.

 

the only place i see anything about easy launcher is in the other tab maybe disable it?

 

yeah i was trying to look for a place to do that but i can't find it.

 

worked for me, props for figuring that out!

 

are any of you guys running 64 bit?

 

Yes I am I have all the features enable thanks to pyr0000 and first i got this error too , then i just reinstalled the driver and it for fixed

 

I have tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it like 4 or 5 times and going in and manually cleaning out the registry and even installing some other versions and reinstalling the new version over it and I even tried disabling the taskmanger icon and it still does it no matter what I do. The name of the window that says failed to load launcher dll is Apoint.exe.

 

maybe uninstall it, search the hard drive for apoint.exe (with vista there seems to be more then one location it finds files.) remove the touchpad from system devices and restart and let it reinstall the drive and all

 

I have to say, circular scrolling is pretty awsome.
But for the gestures for each corner thing, is there a way to assign hotkeys? I'd like to use ctrl+pgup or ctrl+pgdown to switch between tabs.

 

there is a firefox add-on that does that.

 

okay, so I turned on my computer this afternoon, and now I get the same error as the above posts. A little text box with the title "Apoint.exe" says:

"Failed to load lanucher dll"
And yes, "launcher" is misspelled as "lanucher"...

It worked fine for me after installing it... and now after restarting my computer it no longer works. I'm using Logitech setpoint also.

 

ok i got it to work but i can get it to work going forwards and backwards in firefox

 

TY! Dell driver works for me also (X11XRN)

It appears, that it also supports edge-motion (only on dragging and very low speed and no settings for that, but still better than nothing)

 

Same thing for me. It worked fine after installing it on my Sony SZ370P, but I got the same error message upon reboot.

 

undo the UseCustomGUI thing.

Just use it to enter the extended config.

 

Nice, that solved the error. But I get an error for Easy Capture: "Easy Capture could not loaded", that's not even proper english lol...

I'm liking the circular scroll, but with my Sony drivers, there was a feature called "sliding finger" that allowed the following tasks ( around the top left corner): slide right = maximize window, slide left = restore size, slide down = minimize, slide up = restore window from taskbar, slide diagonally down = close window. Is there a way for me to get this feature back (while keeping the dell drivers)??

 

This one did not work for me, but i'm using a driver from dell d410 and it works on 1530.

This is the link to the driver...
http://rapidshare.com/files/157799942/R113813.zip

I get forward/back+horiz/vertical scrolling+ middle mouse +application that i can launch from four sides of touchpad....
It is vista compatible...just ignore the warning.....

 

circle scroll is worth it. this has been working for me for a while.

 

For even more customization options, including touchpad tap zones, scrolling, etc. AND touchpad sensitivity (which IMHO is what makes the default sony alps touchpads so poor to use), use alps driver from here:
drivers.softpedia.com/progDownload/Alps-Touchpad-Driver-Download-24482.html

uninstall old driver, restart, reinstall new driver, restart
most good settings are under "advanced" tab.

 

For those who are getting the launcher.dll error copy EzLaunch.dll from an old Alps driver installation (or use the attached file) to the C:\Program Files\DellTPad directory. For some reason the ez launcher files are not installed by this driver.

 

I followed pyr's instructions in the first post. No matter what I do, I cannot get the horizontal scroll to work, the circle is there, but it just does not scroll. Zoom works, vetical circle works.

This is in Firefox. I download the nightly tester, and typed in Netscape, $Netscape, or "Netscape", or {Netscape}, non worked. There are no errors. I got the Dell tab but I do not have the gesture tab. What the trick?

It works in IE, but I hate going back to it. Anyone can help?

 

You need to edit the apoint.exe with a hex editor. I documented my steps in getting mine to work.

engineersjournal.blogspot.com/2008/12/sony-vaio-touchpad-with-circular-scroll.html

 

hi,
first of all a big 'thank you', guys! i was searching for some proper solution for the whole alps touchpad stuff since months. i don't have the solution for firefox compatibility, but still, thanks.

so. the same with me. i did everything explained in this thread and still cannot horizontally scroll and go back-/forward in firefox. i tried to hex-edit apoint.exe on my own, change the title of firefox to 'Netscape', install the version of davychiu... with no results. what could i have done wrong?

do we also need to edit firefox config-parameters? like mousewheel.* ?

p.s.: what dou you think: what, for god's sake, makes alps-people hard-code letters like "Netscape" in their drivers? is this some kind of company-strategy like "screw the firefox-people, they didn't want to give us benjamins"? as i remember, people tried to contact them and dell, but no response.

i mean: they're kicking the hell out of us in the university, teaching us how to write beautiful code and not to make such fatal mistakes. and still the real world doesn't get a better place to live

greetings

 

Try changing the title to " Netscape" with a leading empty space and without the quotation marks. It works for me. Any solution for the horizontal scrolling issue?

 

I am using Dell driver for Alps touchpad (32 and 64 bit version)

download link location:
http://www.xps-wiki.com/wiki/XPS_M1530_Vista_Drivers

driver is under :
NEW Alps Driver From DELL - Touchpad
7.2.101.211, A02, Last Updated: 10/9/200

 

any new solutions for forward/back gesture ?
can't get it to work in firefox 3.5.3 under xp on my d620
I'm runnuing portable firefox, could that be the problem ?

 

This was a great find, however i'm still missing my inertia settings. Although the setting is available with the registry hack, it doesn't seem to actually do it once set. highly annoying.

Also getting the "unable to see animations" thing