Wheeler, v1.04

The Classic VB IDE was actually written before the mouse wheel was invented, believe it or not. There have been numerous tools and assorted hacks offered over the years to remedy the native non-support VB provides, but I've found none better than Wheeler from Eluent Software. Unfortunately, this company seems to have nearly vanished from the web, and their former domain is now occupied by a squatter.

You can still find their original product description on Archive.org, which I'll also provide below just to preserve another copy. Wheeler was freeware, which seems to run just about anywhere. I've used it on Windows 2000, XP, and 7 (including x64) myself. The beauty of this solution over VBScroll (another utility I really like!) and the pitiful add-in provided by Microsoft, is that it will not only work in VB5 and VBA as well as VB6, but it also works in any window that lacks mouse wheel support! I recently had to use it to get Google Chrome to scroll with the wheel in Windows 7, believe it or not.

So, without further ado, here's the original Wheeler description from Eluent Software:

Download (Windows 2000 and later): wheeler-1.04-setup.exe (426 KB) Wheeler is a free program that enhances the behavior of your mouse wheel. Wheeler allows you to point and roll, that is, point at a window, roll the wheel, and scroll that window. This sounds only natural, but the Windows default behavior is to ignore the window you're pointing to and scroll whichever window currently has the keyboard focus, that is, the window that currently accepts keyboard input. Microsoft's Intellipoint software used to address this problem, but current versions do not, and like Windows itself, Intellipoint now requires you to click in a window before you can scroll it with the wheel. For us point-and-rollers, this is an intolerable step backwards, and since newer Microsoft mice actually require the current Intellipoint to function correctly, it became necessary to write Wheeler. Wheeler is a highly configurable program. Here are some highlights: In addition to scrolling the window under the cursor when you roll the mouse wheel, it's possible to move the keyboard focus to that window, which is what Intellipoint used to do, and which programs similar to Wheeler tend not to support. Through the concept of wheelability, you can control how wheel messages are processed on a per window class basis. Scoped window classes allow you to associate window class names with the specific programs that define them, so you don't have to worry about affecting other programs that may unwittingly use the same window class names. Creation of Window Class Rules is easily accomplished by using the Wheeler Configuration program. You can translate wheel messages into scrollbar messages, which can improve the behavior of a number of window classes, including the Windows Richedit and Outlook 2003 Supergrid. You can exclude entire programs from the Wheeler treatment. Click here for a couple of screenshots of Wheeler Configuration. Note that Wheeler runs only under Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows.

Very Important Disclaimer

Wheeler is not mine! I have no permission to redistribute it. I have done my best to track down a "legitimate" source for download of this package, but have not found one. The package you can download from this site is an exact copy of what I originally downloaded from Eluent Software, which (to the best of my understanding) owns all rights to it. This software is being offered in the spirit I believe the original author intended - as a free assist to other folks out there who are frustrated with poorly written or very old software. I can offer you absolutely no support for it.

If you are associated with Eluent Software, and would like to discuss this, I'd very much like to hear from you!