title: Flash: Using mouse wheel events in full screen mode (Windows and Mac)
body: <p>Although Flash has a mouse wheel event (<a href="http://drawlogic.com/2007/05/13/mousewheel-event-in-as3/" rel="noreferrer">MouseEvent.MOUSE_WHEEL</a>), it comes with quite a few problems.</p>
  
  <p>The first is that the event is not yet supported on the Mac.  So there are a bunch of <a href="http://www.impossibilities.com/v4/2009/03/06/flash-mousewheel-implementations-for-mac-os-x/" rel="noreferrer">solutions</a>, all of which (basically) capture the mousewheel (or DOMMouseScroll) event in javascript and pass it into the flash app. Luckily, under all the Mac browsers I tested, this also works when flash is in fullscreen mode.</p>
  
  <p>Problem 2 is that flash ignores mouse wheel events with small "deltas".  For example, Microsoft's <a href="http://google.com/search?q=cache:bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1561%3FactionOrder%3Ddesc+site:bugs.adobe.com+adobe+jira+FP-1561&amp;cd=3&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=us" rel="noreferrer">IntelliPoint Mice with "Smooth Scroll"</a> causes this problem. A solution to this is the same as the solution for the mac... i.e. capture the javascript mouse wheel event in the browser and pass it to the app.  The issue is that of the browsers in windows that I tested (firefox, ie, safari, and chrome), they don't seem to capture this event when flash is in full screen mode. Does anyone know why or how to fix that?</p>
  
  <p>I currently have a hybrid solution that always takes events from javascript (in non-fullscreen or fullscreen mode) except when it's in fullscreen mode on Windows (at which point it takes them from the flash mousewheel event).  So the only times it fails is in full screen mode on Windows with a mouse that has small deltas.  Anyone have a full solution? Or just a better one? </p>