Slashdot Mirror

jotaeleemeese writes: "A few days ago there was a discussion about gesture navigation in the Opera browser, that prompted my to buy Black & White, download Opera and get the evaluation version of Sensiva. Being a trackball user, I found gesture navigation too cubersome, I found a mouse not much better either. Then I thought a pen based device or a touchpad could be ideal for this kind of input, but before investing my hard cash buying something, I would like opinions from /.ers that have already tried something with these or other programs using gesture recognition and what the results have been."

Trepidity writes "The Opera web browser appears to be the first to add gesture-based navigation (made popular recently in the game Black&White) as a standard feature. You can perform a bunch of common actions with simple gestures, such as holding down the right mouse button moving left and releasing to go back, or moving up then down while holding the button to reload the current page. A list of the various implemented commands can be found on their site." I've been playing a fair amount of B&W lately - the interface took a bit to learn, but once you['ve got it done, it's actually a very efficent system of getting around - the use within the Web might finally take the Web beyond just a point and click interface. Maybe. Probably not. CT: Just don't try it with a thinkpad style nipple mouse. My wrist lost feeling. Update: 04/18 02:55 PM by T : Read more below for a software project that promises to spread some gestural goodness even further.

Mike Bennett writes with news of his "free software project. It's called wayV, and provides gesture recognition for X. Version 0.1 was released a while ago and let you start applications with gestures, version 0.2 will be released this week and also includes the ability to send keypress, e.g. make a gesture to change desktops, etc." This looks like a modestly conservative 0.1, too;)

jaredcat writes "According to bwcenter.com and an article on ZDNet's GameSpot, Peter Molyneux's eagerly awaited Black & White has finally gone gold and will be shipping in North America on 3/27/01. I know what I'll be doing for spring break..." I just read that ZDNet article linked above - the ASPCA will be protesting this game, mark my words.