Update: And we’re back again

It looks like the issue is caused by having an unsaved “custom theme.” Don’t think you made a custom theme? Think again.

Any change to the “personalize” settings like background image (desktop image), colors, font-size, etc… results in a custom theme being generated with those changes. In other words, if your desktop background is not a stock photo that came with Windows 7, you have made a custom theme. So, that picture of your kids, or dog, or cats, or whatever, is a customization, and it has not been saved with the rest of your personal choices as a theme yet.
Click save and give it any name you like. My Logitiech mouse buttons started working again in Firefox right after I did that.

Update 02/13/2010: It appears that my cruise up and cruise down buttons are once again broken inside of Firefox. Still working on it…again…

Not long ago, I complained bitterly about how disabling transparency in Windows 7 caused cruise up and cruise down to stop working in Firefox. My wireless mouse, part of a wireless keyboard / mouse combo from Logitech, had until recently been cruising (scrolling fast) up and down within Firefox with no trouble. Then, shortly after the latest Firefox update (I didn’t notice right away, so I can’t say for sure) these mouse buttons stopped working.

As it turns out Logitech’s keyboard and mouse mapping software, called SetPoint, has numerous well documented errors and glitches inside of it. For Logitech, it seems to be a low priority since the mass market user it targets doesn’t generally make use of all the advanced features modern mouse and keyboards have. It is misleading to advertise that their product does something that actually doesn’t work, but that is another matter.

Windows 7 Update Fixes Keyboard Function Keys or Shortcuts

The January 26, 2010 Windows Update pushed out by Microsoft includes “stability and reliability” updates including on that targets “Keyboard function keys or keyboard shortcuts…that may not work correctly.”

This is interesting because the Cruise Control feature on my Logitech mouse is not the default setting for those buttons. Rather, it is a function assigned to those buttons manually through UberOptions which is the software that Logitech should be releasing instead of the choke-ware it puts out.

This mouse button assignment works very similarly to programming a keyboard function key or shortcut. One goes into the UberOptions interface and the selects which mouse button to program and then what functionality to assign to that button.

I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it would be interesting if this Microsoft fix corrected the mouse button error in Firefox that I was getting.

Have a nice day.

(Needed to add that last part to avoid the Google no man’s land of sub-300 word pages of content.

Did Windows Update Fix Logitech Mouse Cruise Control Issue In Firefox is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC