Slashdot Mirror
Mouse Gestures Gain Followers
StefMeister writes "According to this article at ZDNet, the use of the mouse using 'mouse gestures' (as introduced in Opera) is gaining a lot of followers.
Personally, I almost solely use the keyboard as input device, but it might be interesting for others. Although changing the way people are accustomed to working is always tricky." I certainly enjoy gestures in Mozilla, thanks to OptiMoz.
So how is this going to work with my track ball?
:-)
Mice are for people with more than 10 cm^2 of desk space
The only good weather is bad weather.
second post.. mozilla gestures rock
What effect do mouse gestures have on RSI?
I thought mouse gestures were introduced by Black and White. Didn't Opera "borrow" the idea from the game? Or is it the other way around?
I have used a CAD/CAM package called Applicon Bravo (now owned by unilogic) for many years that used mouse and tablet gestures since it ran on a VAX 11/780, through newer VAX and now PC systems. It uses the middle mouse button to indicate that you are "gesturing" and you can make multi-level menu selections with gestures.
I've tried a few products that use the mouse gestures and I tend to find that I'm much much faster using the keyboard shortcut keys, etc. I would envision that these features may be directed towards newbies?
perfect for those too lazy to learn the hotkeys...now all they have to do is learn an equally confusing mouse gesture! why hit backspace instead of the back button on the browser when you can just hold the button and move the mouse?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I took a look recently (the last time this sort of thing was mention on /.) and I wasn't very happy w/the motions I had to make to move between pages.
It was a list of "drawings" I had to make w/my mouse in order to move through pages.
I just want Moz to use the same keys as IE so I can switch between them and not have to think which one I am using.
If the gestures themselves became easier for me to remember I would probably hop the bandwagon. Until then, I will stay away from having to learn PalmOS-like graffiti.
I enjoyed using "mouse moves" to cast spells in Black and White - And it would be cool maybe to input text that way, Mouse a smiley to create a smile icon and such.
//grabs two by four
I must run forth and patent the idea of mouse gestures inputting text to a form!
Back off - It's my idea!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Great Galeon has gestures for a while now
God, how I love this.
Much better than gestures, at least for me as a trackball user.
Optimoz PieMenues.
But your mileage may vary.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
I'm not sure why anyone would use this unless they have some wierd disability. Keyboard is clearly much faster and more versitile.
For mouse gestures in all your favorite window programs try 'stroke it' (heh, nice name). Link included... http://www.tcbnetworks.com/strokeit/forum/
The idea of waving the mouse about the screen to do things is good, if done right. But I don't see it as any major innovation, just something thats handy at times.
There is also the problem of having the 'gestures' easy to remember, and how do you document what counts as a gesture, how acurate does it need to be. - Maybe it will take off in many applications, but, its not likely to change the way we work or anything is it?
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
I didn't think that gestures was all that great when they first came out. But after getting used to using them for web browsing, I wanted more for every application. Since then I've used Sensiva, and even tho I only use a few like minimize and new, I find that I am now handicapped when I use machines that don't have mouse gestures. Its so slow and cumbersome. Don't get me wrong, the keyboard is great for a lot of things, but I still find myself using the mouse, and a lot of the gestures can be done without moving my hands back and forth.
I've first used mouse gestures features back in 1994 in Mentor Graphics EDA tools. It was running under SunOS.
http://www.mentor.com/
Nÿco
I thought this sounded like some nifty gee-whiz crappy feature when I first heard about it, but after trying it in Opera I was quite impressed. It quickly became a normal browsing habit.
The only problem was that on occasion I would accidently make the gesture for "close window" and my pages would magically disappear.
It'd be ultra-nifty if there was a mouse gesture training app, so I could map commands to custom gestures. Then I could bind the movement made when I throw my mouse at my monitor to Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Don't blame me, I get all my opinions from my Ouija board.
The coolest gestrual system I've ever seen is the gestural 3D Drawing program Sketch at Brown University. You can build pretty detailed 3D scenes with constraints and all quickly.
I think they should implement gestures similar to those in Black & White.
Drawing out something resembling an ancient religious symbol to go back a page would be interesting. I've been looking for a way to push my carpal-tunnel to its limits.
"Personally, I almost solely use the keyboard as input device"
Even for web surfing??
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Actually, mouse gestures are very easy to get used to. Within a day of installing (and registering) Opera, I was using them more than the buttons to navigate. Now I only have trouble when I try to use IE and have to remind myself that the gestures don't work. I know that it's not free software, but IMHO Opera is such a better browser than anything else out there that it's worth coughing up the $30 if you use the web with any frequency.
"It uses the middle mouse button to indicate that you are "gesturing" and you can make multi-level menu selections with gestures."
Hey! I use the "middle" gesture. Doesn't work too well, and pisses people off. Don't think my computer likes it either.
I don't use Opera. So if I need to hold a mouse button and move my mouse,then how in the heck would I select text for cut-n-paste?
Coderz 4 Life
What the hell does that have to do with the post you replied to?
And for the record, I am pretty sure Opera had it first.
slashdot!=valid HTML
..although it's got to be the first time a feature from a game has made it to a web browser ;)
I guess the next stage in development will be to hook up eye-movement sensors for control of a UI, altho thats bound to cause some nasty and new forms of RSI.
Is there a way to get my mouse to wave "Good Morning" New York style?
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I don't think my computer wants to know what gestures I make at it when Windows XP curls up and dies. The good thing is that it reboots into Linux by default, so....
Combine this with one of those infrared finger mice, and you can feel like a Jedi: "This isn't the page you're looking for, go back." *waves hand to the left*
...
I personally love mouse gestures. However, how long will it be before M$ picks up on the idea an either tries to "own" the technology or claim that it was always theirs in the first place when the functionality magically appears as a C# or ASP.Net API.
Mouse gestures just won't work for the average Joe while all the applications that use them don't follow the same patterns.
It's hard enough to memorize all the gestures for Mozilla now imagine all software developers inventing their own crazy gestures.
Isn't this an oxymoron ("complicated point-and-click toolbars")?
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Does anyone else think "StrokeIt" is a really bad name for a product?
What kind of crack is the submitter on?
A number of mouse manufacturers, including Microsoft and Logitech, have incorporated additional buttons that you can configure to do anything you want. Why use software when hardware already has the ability to perform the same functions?
Gestures '02 = Mac '84
Today: Hold down a button, move the mouse, go back a page in your browser.
18 years ago: Hold down a button over an icon, move the mouse toward the trash, watch your item get deleted!
Also: Hold the button down, move the mouse over some text, watch it get selected!
And: Hold the button down, move the mouse diagonally across some files, watch them get selected!
-Elentar
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
I second that. I used the normal gestures at first, but after I got this installed I've used gesturing a lot more.
For those not in the know it's a circular menu interface, like in Neverwinter Nights. It works the same as gestures, but it has icons and text to make it easy to learn new gestures. (Which is the biggest problem with the standard gestures IMHO.)
This is something new that Redhat can add to Bluecurve!
Apple had something similar with the Newton (now part of OS X's Ink system)... I'm sure Xerox and others experimented with this earlier as well.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
The problem with Optimoz and its successor RadialContext is that both require a Linux user to have root priveleges in order to be installed. When will the Mozilla project pause from developing advanced functionality and begin to make it accessible to all but those who follow poor security practices? In addition to not even entering the 'known issue' with non-priveleged installs in their bugs database, anyone who installs as these packages as root can't use it with normal user accounts anyway. By admitting to using this package, you are publicly admitting to running as root on console. This may not be a wise thing to do with your real name.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
I give it gesture every day...
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I tried pie menus for about 3 weeks, and they are terrible. The first thing is that the pie menu that moves around is incredible laggy. Second, it's hard to know what the pictures mean, while it's easy to right click, and find what you're looking for in a text menu. Pie menus could be optimal if you want to spend months memorizing exact movements to get where you want, but a lot of people don't have the patience.
Check eBay, they should be quite cheap... not good resolution on the mouse movements (maybe 150-300 dpi), but still useful. I want to pick one up and try Q3 or UT with it.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this functionality could have some real practical uses for the pr0n industry.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I use Opera gestures - and love them. But they don't make sense for all applications. The problem is a dsicontinuity when you switch between keyboard and mouse - either way. Editing, and most programming operations, is fundamentally a keyboard based operation, and hot keys are far more sensible than mouse gestures for this. But for me, browsing the web is a mouse-based operation. I have to point to links to follow them, so my hand is on the mouse. I have a wheelmouse, so scrolling is also under my fingers. The only gestures I use regularly are back and forward, and they have become so automatic I use them (uselessly0 wherever the model applies - i.e. in all "browser" type applications, such as Konqueror or Windows Explorer.
One thing we want to do is to try and get people to standardise. It will be a *real* pain if one piece of software used a gesture for minimise and another for quit.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
...when I give those DRM assholes over at Disney the finger.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
check out wayV for gesture recognition in X11 - it's cool and apt-getable.
x
Dunno about Opera, but the original Myth: The Fallen Lords used "gesture clicking", moving your mouse as you clicked the button, to indicate formation alignment when moving units.
I tried Stroke It for about 15 mins and found it wants movements that are too precise
... in Opera were a pretty nice feature. ,
:)
Really, it sucks moving your mouse all the way
to the top of the screen just to press back/forward
which is exactly what you spend 90% of inputtime on when using your browser.
Then, I got the Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 mouse with a forward/back button on the side.
And I gotta tell you: Mouse gestures suck when all you have to do is push a button
I also thought that an (hopefully non-profit) organiztion should start patenting things like this, under an "open source" patent. That is, your code can use it for free, but only if you release your code. If you choose not to release the code, you have to license the patent from the organization (and this is how the organization makes enough money to patent all the crazy new ideas its members have). All this just to be a prick and stick it to the companies that use their patents as weapons of evil...
:). Oh wait, I said non-profit.
The organization could offer someone like, say, Microsoft, a license for $5 billion
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
There was a shareware package you could get that would do basically the same thing. They called the gestures "glicks" and it was targeted primarily at users of touchpad type input devices (eg. Cirque's SmartCat). I hope they're not trying to patent this or anything, because there is DEFINATELY prior art :P
After the buttons on a mouse, I find the mouse-wheel to be the most attractive and useful feature. Just think how much you save yourself by using the wheel to scroll up/down in your application and keep the arrow focused on the screen not to mention, using one finger.
You can take away all mouse-gestures and I won't complain, but I will get mad as hell if you give me a mouse without a wheel.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Mouse gestures are the best thing for masturbators since baby oil/lotion/vaseline/
Use the right hand for navigating and the left hand for.. err you know...
At least this is what I heard. It isn't like I do it or anything.
My Mom caught me watching a movie once starring the famous Russian actor Kotcha Jackinoff
I have been thinking about this. there was a discussion about this a while back here on slashdot talking about the gesturing as seen in minority report.
it was stated by myself and others that the gestures that good 'ol tom was using were too exagerated and that nobody would want to use such large flailing movements to navigate through files, video etc...
it seems to me that the most efficient way to "gesture" your way through information would be more along the lines of morse code.
I would much rather just ahve a touch sensitive mouse pad (better than the touch pads we see today on laptops etc) and you would tap in certain patterns to acheive what you want.
this could also be placed on the tops of keys on the keyboard.
what if you tapped out "J J J" (not hard enough to depress the J key - but enough to register the tap on the sensor on the J key... this action would then do whatever you assigned it to.
the other option is chording buttons on the mouse.
I have the MS intellimouse which I love. the two thumb buttons are assigned to forward and back and I cant stand it when i use a mouse without these functions.
If you were to add more buttons to the mouse - you could then chord certain actions.
I am just very dexteritous with my fingers - and using them in tapping and chording formations just makes more sense to me based on my particular preference.
At UD (where I am attending), I have been able to try out a device that can do multi-finger gestures on the same surface that does typing and mousing. It has does gestures for back, forward and scroll all the requisite browser movements for reading Slashdot, plus most other conceivable hotkey combos! Here is an article about it in our school newspaper: http://www.mis4.udel.edu/udaily/index.html
There are two types of people in this world, those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig. 001010011 001110101 00
Alias Poweranimator on SGI used to use mouse gestures (before it was A|W then Maya) and so does 3DS MAX.
I am comming towards the end of my moz experience (check my other posts on that) and one of the first things I did was load up optimoz and added mouse gestures since it was so highly raved about.
:
My experience was ugh to bad. The first big problem I had was copying text from webpages. For some reason, moz always thought I was gesturing. Well, no. Then, outside of that accidental gesture, I found myself making them a lot more, including the close gesture. Then, when I really wanted to make one, it never worked right
For back and forward, I have my intelimouse explorer. For scrolling I have a wheel, but the no autoscroll bug in Moz is kinda anoying. If mouse anything needs to be added, that is it. Anything else I can do w/ quick menus, like opening a new tab. Years of FPS mean I can quickly move my mouse and click w/ deadly acuracy.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
the idea that the future of the man-machine interface might be gestural has been around for a while. bruce sterling mentions it in "Holy Fire."
with the current state of voice recognition i'm relatively certain that i could sign to my computer better than i can speak to it. and i wouldn't need fancy headphone/microphone setups.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
link
The best mouse gesture I've seen in Opera would not work under the current development of MozGest. To go back under Opera, first right-click, then quickly left click, like you are tapping your fingers on a desk. Go the other way for forward. Hard to explain, but very useful. It just feels right. There is no dragging involved.
-twb
I love mouse gestures in Opera. The problem comes when I have to use IE because a page doesn't render correctly and I forget that I am not using Opera. I end up popping up a menu or clicking on something that I don't want to.
I want to see more apps with mouse gestures.
That's why when u hold the mouse still for 2 secs it shows what each button means...
I do agree that the pictures are a bit confusing, but I give it another shot (it advanced alot since the first time I saw it..)
^_^
I was introduced to gestures when I was working as a PCB designer on a CAD package called Pantheon, a clone of Mentor BoardStation, or at least it tries.
I liked them a lot. When designing PCBs, you rarely need the keyboard and are constantly staring at the screen. Anything to make accessing commands faster with the mouse is great.
The only thing is, you can get RSIs fairly quickly as a PCB designer. I don't know of any other job where you use the mouse exclusively, and a LOT.
"Introduce" != "Invent." Sure, lots of CAD/CAM/CAE tools had gestures forever ago, but how many regular users run those programs daily?
Opera "introduced gestures" to the web browsing world.
my intellimouse spasmed and then disconnected itself while i was reading this. i guess you could say i made some obscene mouse gestures at that point.
What if we had the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to links on a web page?
Let me explain my reasoning and then what I am talking about. Our company is in the process of converting its HP3000 database to Oracle and its terminal applications to web applications. One of the drawbacks to switching from a terminal application such as Reflections is we lose all of the custom shortcuts that people use to navigate through the system.
As an example, a web application has a row of navigation across the top that stays the same throughout. We could say that any link that matches this description from this URI: domain.com/ or domain.com/app/module maps to Ctrl-F3 or Ctrl-Alt-F.
Let's take it a step further and say that we can add shortcuts to not just links, but form elements as well. We can already tab to form elements, but this would make the process that much faster.
Not only would this be an absolute hit with people that hate taking they hands off the keyboard, but I believe that whatever browser would implement this would make great inroads into corporations that are converting their terminal applications to web based applications.
1;
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Up and down, up and down.
That's my gesture for: Zoom in on that tasty bush so that I can climax.
(-> ahhhhhhhh.
i just gave my boss a gesture and now i'm looking for a new job. what do you think of this one? its in the bay area so i wouldn't have to move!
Web Developer II
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Hmmm,
for me they aren't laggy.
And I think learning pie menues is easier than gestures cause you have visual feedback. Wait 1 second and it shows you what the icons mean.
Therefore I don't need months to memorize them. I just need 4 or five (next/previous tab and reload to name the three most important).
Of course one can argue, that the normal right click text menu is enough. Perhaps I'm just happy, cause the pie menues give me exactly those functions that are missing (for me) in the normal right-click-text-menu.
As I've said before: YMMV.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Ah, but you have to use both hands to browse the web -- they only need one. The initial target market for this is compulsive masturbaters. If penetration is deep enough, they expect to move to one-handed Vietnam veterans and people trying to make good on "I could do that with one hand behind my back" bar bets.
Other potential markets include users of hand-crank-generator-powered computers (which have one hand tied up at all times) and computer users too dense to manage a keyboard.
May we never see th
And let it teach him/her how much mojo can get wasted by writting informative comments while not logged...
:)
Incidentally, their notion of "custumize" is jolly Linuxian, isnt it? A text associative array of keypad keys translated into coordinates. Joe User, keep away, you are not welcome here...
Sorry all you mouse gesture devotees out there, multi-finger gestures on a touch surface are even better than mouse gestures 'cause you don't have to draw a whole symbol!
With multi-touch gestures, the finger combination and direction of motion at the beginning of the slide immediately determine the command. See:
http://www.fingerworks.com/gesture_demo.html
Plus you can mix them in with typing and pointing as well, all in the same space!
While reading the article, I read that Optimoz's Mozilla gestures have "Easter Egg" gestures. Since I use this little app I wanted to see the hidden features. Unfortunately, my google search turned up nothing useful but then I thought, "Wait, the code is there for all to see."
I'm hardly a programmer but a quick look and I found the file the sets the actions for various gestures and looked through it for new and exciting gestures.
The only Easter Eggs I found were (for those that use gestures in Mozilla):
Right - Left - Down - Up - Right : this will give pages an "Exploding Backgrownd" which worked best on Google's home page. It is just an animated image of an explosion tiled in the background. Caused my little 450MHz to slow way down but everything was back to normal after exiting that page.
The other is a "V" shape for "Validate" which, I think, sends the page being viewed off for wc3 validation. This is cool because I didn't even know that gestures could handle diagonals.
KDE users/gesture lovers give it a whirl! I currently have gestures mapped to start up Konq, Konsole and to lock my screen.
UC Berkeley KIC (an IC Layout App) used gestures also - probably a knock-off of the Applicon app.
True, but I can move my mouse up and click the back/refresh/home/whatever a hell of a lot faster than 1 second.
Random is the New Order.
Quicktime VR also incorporates some mouse gestures.
:)
:)
h tm l
Note the ability to click and drag left or right, up or down to move in a Quicktime VR movie.
There are other example on the Mac that I can think of.
Holding down option(?) + click drag to scroll through a finder's window (havent tested in Mac OS X, and this is using a one button mouse of course, probably just a simple button click + drag in a multi-button mouse)
Also Adobe Acrobat Reader has a similar scroll mode when you select the hand tool.
Nevertheless great to see this being extended and embraced in web browsing
Can't wait to try it out
Mr. David Every had a previous article on MacKido.com regarding mouse gestures (specifically wheel mouse scrolling vs. click drag type scrolling)
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/CounterPoints.
There are some other nice articles about interface you can find on his website.
-codeonezero
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Unless you build your own custom browser (using Mozilla, which is why this isn't off topic ;-), you need code to execute on client-side... which lends itself towards javascript.
You can easily capture key events (presses, "downs", "ups", etc.) and process them accordingly. I've already had to do this to allow users to use the Enter key to "tab down" a spreadsheet type interface, instead of submitting the actual HTML form or doing nothing. It's actually very easy.
You could generate this javascript dynamically even, based on the links for a certain page and whatnot, or just have static javascript if that meets your needs.
At any rate, just wanted to point out that it's presently quite possible, and given the nature of the internet, I don't see how there'll be any other way to do it that doesn't involve some kind of client-side script like javascript.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Bullshit, mouse gestures are for spastic asswiped with the Delerium Tremens. Homos might use them while wacking off, but on real person would ever think about employing this crap. Get lives and stop gesturing with your mice.
Master Yoda says I've been "mouse gestering" my way out of trouble for years.
These are not the files I am looking for
The point of pie menus is that the menu waits to pop up on purpose so that you don't see it if you don't need it. The idea is that after using "back" two or three times, you've memorized where it is in the menu and don't need to see it anymore. The tradeoff is having to wait 1 second the first few times versus having to see the menu when you don't need it later.
When I'm surfing, I tend to visit text-heavy pages, so I do a lot of scrolling. I use the mouse to click on a link and then I get it out of the way. I use the arrow keys on the keyboard to scroll through the page and to go back. My hand gets cramped up when I hold a mouse for long, and this works for me. Besides, it keeps me in practice for those occasions when I still use lynx to browse.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
I don't believe in touch-screens for the same reason lightpens flunked: You do not want to keep your hand suspended in the air in front of the monitor, nor do you want to keep bringing it up, for everyday work. In fact, you don't want to do it for any longer period of time at all.
/ Per
Blender has had mouse gestures for a very very long time.
Opera did not introduce this.
Although it didn't get wide usage, Emacs used to have (still has?) a "mouse gestures" add-on that allows you to map any unique mouse gesture to a key-sequence (which Emacs can then map to pretty much any command -- including user defined ones).
Always meant to try it out, but never got around to it. Wonder if it's still around?
Mouse gestures are fine but.... the mouse in general is a problem. I personally hardly use my mouse at all except for specific applications which there is no other choice. (graphics, games, web browsing). It is absolutely painful for me to watch an average computer user slowly clicking and dragging to highlight text when we have perfectly quick and accurate keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the same job instantly. (shift-home/end/cursors). The mouse is crippling the mind of users... they feel they must use it for EVERYTHING even when the cursor is right beisde the word they want to delete they take the trouble of moving their hand off the keyboard and highlighting the text instead of just hitting the backspace key 5 times. It's just dumbing it down unnecessarily. We don't want dumb computer users.. make them learn to use their system properly.
Another proof by example that Google is a Good Thing, they're working on keyboard shortcuts for quickly getting to your search results without needing to pry your sticky fingers from the keyboard. Best of all, it uses the familiar k and i for all us vi[m] users.
mouse gestures are awesome. first experienced them in some game a while ago and then discovered Opera supported them too -- haven't looked back. Moz + Optimoz is a great combo too. makes using IE so boring.
i just wish i could specify my OWN gestures instead of using the built-in ones. i've accidentally closed so many windows i can't even count them all.
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
Eh... personally, I am not a big fan of 'gestures'. Honestly these would probably be more hurtful then helpful to me (I tend to just play with my cursor while I'm reading or if I'm bored). It's a neat idea, but I have to agree with StefMeister, I'm almost completely keyboard-dependent. Honestly, except when I'm 'browsing for fun' it's not uncommon to find me using lynx instead of a traditional desktop browser (Mozilla, NS, MSIE, Konqueror). But I guess some users will find this useful, then I sorta have to wonder how many people it will just totally confuse... (Think 'Joe Average' user)
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
The moment that, to me, made Minority Report worth watching is when the dude using gesture-gloves to sort through some data goes to shake the hand of someone who just walked in, and all the stuff on his virtual desktop basically falls off the edge of the world. Ohhh yeah.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
So your playing B&W, you are half way through a gesture to create water on your poor people and the game decides to autosave, freezing input in the middle of the gesture. So you try to recover and complete the gesture or at least make it do something sane, but no. You get a fireball or something and incinerate your people. Bad god. Maybe the PC version of BW is better, but the Mac version could inspire one to injure the programmers.
Galeon on the other hand has nice gesture support.
Galeon has them, although they are not enabled by default.
Pie menus are a concept I've liked the look of for a while. Yes, when I tried the mozilla pie menus for the first time, they weren't the speediest things on the planet.
However, people get far, far quicker at using them when they remember *which direction* the option they want is in, whereas for a normal pop-up menu you'll always need to look at it.
It's quite impressive when you see a man blindfolded and asked to select options from the menu, and he doesn't miss a single one. Memorising the most frequently used options is not a problem for most folks.
... It's true, the Super Nintendo had basic support for gestures. It's documented in the manual: "Starting the Game, 1.) flip off the power switch..."
My unit was defective, though...
Stroke It truly rocks. I've gotten so accustomed to it in three days' use, I already miss it badly on other computers. I highly recommend it.
My other sig is also a
...though I've nothing personally, religiously, or otherwise against mouse gestures, I personally have no interest in using them. I try to keep my hands as far away from the mouse as possible, while still within a graphical environment, and making the computer even more dependent on the mouse just isn't going to swing me.
What I really wish more people would do is allow for greater user configuration of keyboard shortcuts. I'm not talking about a macro tool like the old Tempo II Plus for the old MacOS (which my father still runs on his MacOS 9 partition and is very very sorry to see go away in 10). I'm talking about being able to rebind any command to whatever key combination you want, within the OS, like rebinding keys under Q3. I don't see why this stuff has to be hard coded all the damn time. I remember MS Word used to let you (if I recall correctly) but the last time I used Word often enough to need to worry about changing the keybindings was a very long time ago, and I don't know if the feature is still there.
I haven't found many pieces of software aside from game software that lets you do it. Default configurations are fine, but I want to be able to reassign useful key combinations that are assigned to commands I'll never use, to ones I will, without having to edit the source code to do it.
this story was also covered by MSNBC @
http://www.msnbc.com/news/816049.asp
--Note to self. Add witty sig here, someday...
the back and forward without even moving themouse was my favorite thing about opera. mozgest doesnt do em, but if you are running galeon you can get the right-click, left-click to go back. going forward isnt supported, but i seem to use back the majority of the time anyways.
I suggest giving the new build a try. After hovering over the pie menu for about a second (I think it's configurable), tooltips will show up telling you what each icon does. After a day of normal usage with this, I memorized the locations of the things I use. It's almost like a gesture in that I bring the menu up and nudge it in the appropriate direction.
However, I use radial menus in conjunction with gestures. I use gestures for the most part, and radial menu usually for links (open in new tab, save as, etc.). Together they have sped things up considerably.
doesn't this just cry out for an option for the delay time (or no delay), or even whether or not the menu ever becomes visible?
Of course, it seems the most cited example of what this is good for (back/forward in history) are exactly the things I have 2 of my mouse buttons already dedicated to, and would not want to do any other way at this point. CTRL+R will always be better, for me, to reload the page, so all that really remains are things like changing text size (keyboard shortcuts are made primarily for the right hand on that, which is pointless, and the IE shortcut of alt+mousewheel to change font size goes through the history in phoenix) and cycling through tabs.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I already patented mouse gestures. Not just for web browsing either, for menus and stuff as well. Y'all can expect to hear from my lawyers soon.
Why introduce another risk?
Mouse use is already a risk for persons: RSI. Making more movements with the mouse, with gestures, I feel that this is heading a road we don't wanna go.
Use the keyboard and love your hands/wrists for a long time.
Good idea!
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
is an OS that uses gestures and has handwriting recognition so i can get me one 'o them tablet pc's. screw keyboards/mice. i want to sit on my couch, connected to the net over 802.11b, and surf with a tablet on my lap. i wonder who'll make it first?
many CAD/EDA type software packages have had mouse gestures for a while. i know mentor graphics has had some extremely useful gestures since i started using it.
All circuits busy.
Mouse gestures in the form of pie menus have been around for a while now. See, for example:
You can even find pie menus in real life -- look at home entertainment appliance remotes.
1) Hold down the right mouse button. I can't stress this enough. Don't click once, then move the mouse, then click again.
2) Use the tooltips.
3) Don't feel you need to use the pie menu for everything, just a few things like switching tabs, refreshing a page etc is good. Keep doing it, and after a few times you'll find it comes naturally.
4) Throw the mouse around. If you're wondering why the pie menus follow you around, it's so you can be very vicious with them. Hold down right, throw the mouse to the top left, the throw it to the right and let go. You can do this very quickly, because you don't have to aim, and the movements can be very vague indeed. Then let go.
5) Don't think about it. If you constantly look at the menu while using it, you lose the speed advantage. If anything, just defocus for a moment while you start, that way you remember the motion rather than what's on the screen.
To be honest after getting used to them, I love them. I wish GTK/Qt had an option to do this. It's one of those cool hacks you want to do but never have time for....
the IE shortcut of alt+mousewheel to change font size goes through the history in phoenix
Its control+mousewheel in IE. Normal windows behavior in any app for the alt key is to do things in the menu bar.
Though radial context menus are supposed to be faster than mouse gestures, I disagree for one simple reason :
You need to click twice - once to start the radial menu, and once more to confirm your choice. Also the fact that the menu moves with the mouse is a tad dis-orienting when you're trying to learn them (compared to this, mouse gestures have a much smaller learning curve).
I've tried both for quite some time now and gestures definitely win. Ofcourse, that's because I'm using a mouse.
I could definitely see trackball users getting a lot of good use out of radial context menus.
Anyway, both these features go a LONG way in bringing converts into the mozilla camp and that's a good thing for Open Source.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
However, people get far, far quicker at using them when they remember *which direction* the option they want is in, whereas for a normal pop-up menu you'll always need to look at it.
With a normal right-click style popup menu, you also ten to remember where the option you want is. For instance, if you right-click on a link in IE, the open in new window option is the second one. I could and do do that with out really looking at it or even really thinking about it.
Distance is a difficult thing to judge when using the mouse without looking. I'd like to see you hit that second option every time blindfolded.
Another factor which determines how quick a menu system is would be the distance the mouse has to travel -- using a standard menu system we all know and love (or hate), we have to move further to get to some options, less for others. With a radial menu system, the distance to each option is the same.
Is there a mouse/bug in Mdk90? I received this a minut ago:
"A program called 'konqueror' is slowing down the others on your machine. It may have a bug that is causing this, or it may just be busy.
Would you like to try to stop the program ?"
Never received it before.
Its control+mousewheel in IE.
Oops, I was just going from memory because, either way, it doesn't work in phoenix and I don't have a quick IE shortcut available on this machine any more. Still, the ALT+mousewheel behavior is as I described in phoenix.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Where they have a pie menu plug-in for Mozilla. I am a huge pie-menu fan. They are so much faster than a right click menu where you have to look down through all the options, and find the one that you want, and position the mouse just right, and then click. What a waste of motor control.
With pie menus, you can internalize the movement, and do it without even looking at the screen. I'm loving Radical's back and forward are just click, drag left (for back) or click drag right (for forward) When I want to full screen, I drag diagonally up and to the left, then curve around to the right. They've done a great job.
Another beautiful pie menu implementation is in Natural Selection the mod.
Now I just want to zip around web pages all day.
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
Gads get a life. That fact it the using the keyboard in general is quicker than using a mouse. Ask any old-school word perfect secretary how much they like using the shortcuts instead having to use a mouse.
But you're right I would certainly call 50 year old ladies named "Nancy" super geeks, because they prefer clicking keys rather than a mouse. Go away now.
When I first started using Opera (I use it exclusively now, save for .NET things like FastCounter and Hotmail), mouse guestures were really tough to get used to, all the way to the point where I just turned them off. Every once in a while, I'll fumble around and hit the wrong button, move the mouse a little, and end up backing up or something annoying like that when I'm trying to read, say, an NYT article.
If they kept it down to just a few guestures, I'd consider using them again. But there are just too many ways for it to get in my way right now.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
That's just, wrong.
"becuase mouse gestures sux0rz!! I am 3l337 hax0r smarty man!!!11!"
This is also mentioned in the tips section of
the download page. Did you know that you get
extra functions when holding Alt?
Please, can't you Window Manager coders hack something together so that I could use my mouse gestures on ALL the windows? You can't imagine how many times I click-r-l-r on a window and get momentarily puzzled when I notice it's not closing.
Mouse gestures make so much damn sense that I want to spit on all the so-called "user interface experts" who don't see them as the absolute #1 priority for general implementation. As far as I'm concerned, those guys are frauds. Mouse gestures should have been in everything for a decade now.
After using it for a couple months... I couldn't possibly live without it.
http://www.tcbnetworks.com/strokeit/
This is the help page for Opera gestures.
http://www.opera.com/windows/mouse.html
They are great. Also Opera is a much better browser than the others. And runs in Linux and Windows.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
Where's the innovation here?!?!?
I would own a palm-pilot if I wanted to use graffiti. (No thanks.)
I'll stick with normal menus.
That's just what I need. Windows that will do things I don't want when my Tourette's Syndrome is acting up.
; )
If you configure the mozilla gestures to best suit you, they can make you more productive than just using shortcut key combinations I think. I would like to see a challenge between my setup with optimoz gestures and someone solely using their keyboard or any other mechanism (radial menus, etc). I seriously think gestures (when configured correctly) can be quicker than most anything.
The configuration can is key. It should be suited to what you as a user can do most efficiently. I have the left mouse button mapped to do the gesturing because that's where my finger naturally rests and I'm quicker with the left button than the right button (don't know why.)
Left and right gestures are mapped to back and forward in the browser history. I have the intellimouse with the back and forward buttons, but I honestly find that the gestures are faster. Just make a quick, slight milisecond movement and you go back a page. Sweet. When I use a browser without gestures and I am actually forced to move my mouse up to click the Back button, I now get so frustrated because it feels like going back to 56k after getting used to a T1.
I have UP mapped to open a new tab, and DOWN mapped to close tab. I like this a lot because I'm always opening up new tabs. With just a quick flick, I have a new window open. And I can quickly close down any tab when I'm done looking at it, and I'm right back at the previous tab. All this without having to move my mouse location.
That's what I love most about gestures is that I can keep my mouse cursor at it's original location; I don't have to move it to close a tab or open a tab. I don't even have to have my hand on the keyboard.
Another important key is to keep the gestures short. None of this Right-Down-Up-Left stuff. I like clean, simple, one-or-two direction gestures. I have all my oft-used functions as short gestures. Reload (Down-Up). Add bookmard (Down-Right)...
Here is my favorite optimized gesture experience. I gesture up once - a new tab is opened. I gesture Left-Right, and Google opens in the new tag. That is, I have Left-Right mapped to go to my home page. So with 3 quick movements I can have google open in a new tab window. That's pretty damn cool.
In closing, my mozilla browsing experience has certainly skyrocketed after I discovered gestures. I would seriously like to see a Mozilla Browsing Efficiency Challenge (MBEC). I think the person armed with the right gestures would be a serious contender.
"Pie menus could be optimal if you want to spend months memorizing exact movements to get where you want, but a lot of people don't have the patience."
so youre saying its easier to memorize movements that arent even shown on the screen rather than ones that are displayed right in front of you??
right.
Pie menus enable you to change and refine the selection during tracking, by moving around the menu to different items. You can also move out further to gain higher angular precision. On the other hand, gestures have no natural built-in way to cancel, change or refine the gesture, and no obvious prompting and feedback mechanism. So gestures are also harder to learn and remember than pie menus.
Once you've messed up a gesture, there's no way of controling how the computer will interpret it, cancel it, or correct it in-flight. You just have to hope your gesture mistake isn't interpreted as the wrong command, then undo the effects of the mistake (if possible), then try over again from the start.
Since pie menus allow you to easily browse the items, reselect, refine or cancel the selection at any time during tracking, they have much lower error rates than gesture regcognition, and are more appropriate for mission critical applications, use in noisy environments, and with low resolution input devices like trackballs or touch screens.
Compare the pie menus in The Sims to the gestures in Black and White: Pie menus can support many more distinct commands than gestures can, plus they're also self revealing (so they're easy to learn), and it's much harder to make mistakes with the pie menus.
Another practical example is ConnectedTV, a Palm application that lets you browse and personalize your TV guide, and automatically speed-dial channels by remote control (by "touch tuning"). ConnectedTV incorporates pie menus that you can quickly and reliably operate with your fingers. It's designed to be robust and easy to use when held in one hand, so you won't lose the pen behind the couch cushion, or miss the beginning of your favorite show because you were fumbling around with grafitti in the dark.
In 1993, Kurtenbach, Sellen and Buxton published a study comparing the speed and error rate of track balls, mice and pens, combined with pie and marking menus with different numbers of items. A link to the paper and the abstract are below. Their results are extremely interesting, especially comparing different numbers of items. (They showed that 8 items is the magic number, even better than 7!)
-Don
An empirical evaluation of some articulatory and cognitive aspects of marking menus.
ABSTRACT
We describe "marking menus", an extension of "pie menus". Pie menus are circular menus subdivided into sectors, each of which might correspond to a different command. Marking menus are pie menus in which the path of the cursor leaves an ink trail. Thus, selecting a sector from a marking menu creates a visual mark similar to a pen stroke on paper. Marking menus are also unique in that they ease the transition from novice to expert user. Novices can "pop-up" a menu and make a selection, whereas experts can simply make the corresponding mark without waiting for the menu to appear.
This paper describes an experiment designed to explore both articulatory and cognitive aspects of pie and marking menus. "Articulatory aspects" refers to how well subjects could execute the physical actions necessary to select from pie menus, given three different kinds of input devices (mouse, trackball, and stylus), and as the number of items in the menu increases. Articulatory aspects were investigated by presenting one group of subjects with the task of selecting from fully visible or "exposed" menus. To investigate the cognitive aspects, two other groups of subjects used invisible or "hidden" pie menus: one group with an ink trail, and one without. In order for marking menus to work effectively, users must be able to mentally represent and associate Selection from hidden menus was designed to reveal Both number of slices per menu and input device were systematically varied. We discuss the findings with respect to menu size, input device, analysis of markings used, and learning.
ConnectedTV turns a Palm handheld into your personal TV guide and remote
I'm not so sure about that...
I read somewhere (no link, sorry) that using a keyboard for shortcuts and stuff only SEEMS faster, but isn't. You also have to consider the type of application. For an old-school word perfect secretary, they are typing pretty much nonstop and keyboard shortcuts are right there where their hands are. For someone browsing the internet, they have one hand on the mouse most of the time and are clicking links, so it is faster to keep that hand there and do motions rather than moving the hand to the keyboard and then doing motions.
IANAL, but I play one on
I saw a prototype thinkpad he made with TWO Joy Buttons, one for each hand, positioned just like nipples! I think it would have sold very well -- it was certainly very appealing!
-Don
ConnectedTV turns a Palm handheld into your personal TV guide and remote
yes, this is definitely for people that are lazy. I am too lazy to move my hand off my mouse after I just clicked a link to hit ctrl+- or backspace or whatever. Since my hand is already on the mouse for almost all of required web browsing, it is faster (and less effort intensive) to just keep it there.
as for learning equally confusing gestures... is moving the mouse back to go back confusing? or forward to go forward? what about tracing the letter 'b' for bookmark? now, some of them aren't intuitive (moving up to open a new tab), but how freakin hard is it to learn 'up'? the zig-zab movement to close a window isn't intuitive but it's fun to just shake the mouse violently to close a window you want to get rid of.
I've been using gestures with tabbed browsing for a month or so and it's definitely faster for me. I even mouse and gesture left handed just fine (I'm right handed and usually mouse with my right, but after awhile my wrist and shoulder like a break so I switch). If a righty can gesture and browse efficiently with his left hand, I would say this works pretty well.
IANAL, but I play one on
-Don http://www.piemenu.com/PieMenuDescription.html
A Description of Pie Menus, By Don Hopkins (don@DonHopkins.com).
Pictures of Pie Menus. [See the web page http://www.piemenu.com/PieMenuDescription.html for illustrations.]
ActiveX Pie Menu Features: The ActiveX Pie Menu component is designed to be robust, general purpose, and easy to integrate into all kinds of web pages and user interfaces. The graphical layout is dynamic and adaptive, and the look and feel can be adjusted in many ways, but pie menus come with reasonable defaults, so they should work well in a wide range of situations.
ActiveX pie menus support any number of items per menu, and arbitrarily nested submenus.
The items can be layed out in reading order (left to right, top to bottom), as well as circular order (clockwise or counter-clockwise).
The number of pie slices can be limited to a user-friendly even number like eight or four, so the slices are always big and easy to select. Extra items are grouped into clusters above and below the pie menu, with the same number of items. You can select any extra item by pointing directly at its label. You can also scroll the pie menu up and down the "totem pole" of clusters, centering the pie on any group, so the items in that group are very easy to select, and the other groups are compact clusters further away from the cursor.
This helps you to mentally chunk items into a few recognizable groups: instead of a tall undifferentiated column of items, you have several stable clusters of eight (or fewer) items. One of the groups is the pie part of the menu, which you can page between groups, and the others groups are displayed as more compact (but harder to select) rectangular menu labels. You can scroll the pie menu from group to group, by pressing the Page Up and Page Down keys, or clicking in the center of a cluster.
Pie Menus come with a set of property pages for easy configuration, that user interface designers can use to create and edit pie menus with tools like Visual Basic.
You can plug pie menus into web pages, by configuring them with HTML properties, and programming them with JavaScript or Visual Basic Script.
You can also plug them into applications supporting ActiveX controls, with tools like Visual Basic, Visual C++, Java, and the ActiveX Control Pad, interactivally configuring them via tabbed property sheets.
There are seven tabbed property pages for documentation, menu outline editing, menu property editing, visual menu tree previewing, font selection, color selection, and image selection.
Simple nested menu description format. Just type the menu items into a text editor or html property as an indented outline, with optional tags for overriding default layout properties and actions.
The indentation of the outline specifies how the items are grouped into submenus, as you would expect. You can use a semi-colon to separate a list of items at the same level of indentation.
Each menu item can have a label as well as an optional action string (that defaults to the label), that may be used as a convenient argument to the menu handler. This is so you can have a descriptive label meaningful to the user, as well as an associated numeric or symbolic action meaningful to the menu handler.
Intelligent dynamic menu layout. Menus are automatically sized and layed out so they're as small as possible with no items overlapping.
Several user interface styles with dynamic window shapes. As well as popping up in traditional rectangular windows, pie menus can also pop up in pie shaped round windows, minimal blob windows, thought balloons, speech balloons, and spoked windows.
Dynamic window shape tracking. The popup windows can dynamically reshape during tracking, to hide all but the selected menu item, reducing clutter. This feature can be enabled or disabled for speed.
Visual control over font, point size, foreground color, background color, light and dark beveled edge colors. Preview property page for browsing the menu tree and seeing how each menu will look.
Beveled edges around any shape of window. This makes overlapping menus easier to see, and fits in nicely with the Windows desktop. This feature can be enabled or disabled for speed.
Mouse-ahead display pre-emption. You can quickly click through nested submenus without popping them up on the screen. The popup delay can be adjusted, which defines how long the cursor must be still before the menu pops up.
Double buffered flicker-free drawing. Menus are drawn into an offscreen buffer, so there is no flashing on the screen. This feature can be enabled or disabled for speed.
When you use a pie menu, preview and selection events are sent to the web page or application. Event handlers can track when an item is selected, when the selected item changes, and whenever the direction or distance changes, to provide continuous feedback of the selection.
Defered menu layout and window creation. Menus are not layed out and windows are not created until the menu is actually used.
Graphical background and target images. You can specify bitmaps to use as the menu background and the target window. Or you can use solid color backgrounds.
Press down and drag, as well as click-up operation. Supports quick "press-move-release" interaction, as well as "click-move-click" interaction, so you don't have to hold the button down.
Supports all three mouse buttons, IntelliMouse wheel, and keyboard. You can pop pie menus up under program control, or in response to any of the three mouse buttons, and even pop them up and navigate all the items and submenus from the keyboard.
Sub-menu browsing is supported, so you can click the other button to pop down a submenu and go back a level, or cancel the whole menu tree.
Pie menus are not patented, proprietary, or restricted. You are free to use them in your own products and web pages. The source code is free, and you may modify it or use it for any purpose you want, provided that the copyright is left intact.
If you make any changes, you are encouraged but not required to send them back to xardox@mindspring.com so they can be integrated back into the official source code.
If you find any bugs, want to suggest new features or enhancements, or would like to find out more about pie menus, please look at the pie menu web page at http://www.piemenu.com.
If you have problems, please check the web page to make sure you're got the latest version, then send email to the author, don@DonHopkins.com.
If you use pie menus on your web page or in a product, I would enjoy seeing it, and would appreciate it if you sent me the URL or a copy of your product.
I've written some papers about pie menu design, available on the pie menu web page, and I'd like to link to other people using or writing about pie menus, so please send me any interesting URLs.
ConnectedTV turns a Palm handheld into your personal TV guide and remote
Pie Menu Instructions
By Don Hopkins (don@DonHopkins.com)
How To Choose With Pie Menus
Mouse Control
There are two ways to use a pie menu with a mouse: with or without holding down the mouse button. You can start by going "click move click", but with experience, you'll learn to go "press move release". The relaxed "click move click" way to use pie menus is to click the button (press and release without moving), move the cursor, then click the button again. The accelerated "press move release" way is to press down and hold the button, move the cursor, then release the button.
When you first pop up a pie menu, the cursor begins in the menu center, and the selection depends on the direction you move. Each pie menu "item" is shaped like a slice of pie, arranged around the cursor in different directions. The center of the pie menu is an inactive area, which doesn't select any items: so you can click once to pop up a pie menu, then click again in the center without moving, to cancel.
The further out from the menu center you move the cursor, the more precisely you control the direction, and the easier it is to select a particular item. You can move the cursor far out to the edge of the screen, for very exact control.
It doesn't matter what path you take to select a pie menu item, the only thing that counts is the direction between the first and final click. This allows you to reselect different items any time before the final click, by moving the mouse around to different slices of the pie.
Mouse Ahead
If you click the button, the pop-up window will appear on the screen instantly. But if you hold the button down and move, the menu display will be pre-empted until you pause. Once you're familiar with the directions, you can press the button and move without hesitating, selecting from the menu very quickly.
You can "mouse ahead" through a pie menu, by smoothly pressing, moving, and releasing the button without hesitating, and the window will never be displayed on the screen!
Even before its window pops up, an invisible pie menu gives you instant feedback by changing the cursor shape to show how many items there are, and which item is selected.
If you want to be sure of the selection, just stop moving, and the pie menu will pop up. You can always change the selection by moving around the menu.
With experience you will be able to reliably "mouse ahead" and even select items from nested pie menus, without looking at the screen.
Nested Menus
A pie menu can have any number of submenu levels arranged in a nested tree. Any item can pop up another pie submenu, that itself can contain items with submenus.
Clicking in an item with a submenu pops it up, centered on the cursor, on top of the previous menu. Clicking again in the center of the submenu cancels the whole tree. But clicking the other button goes back to the previous level.
When you press the other button down, the cursor moves back to the current menu center. When you release the other button in the menu center, you go back to the previous menu, positioned in the same place you were when you left it. But you can also move the cursor out of the menu center before releasing the other button, and you will stay at the current level. This is convenient if you just want to get back to the menu center and select another item.
Scrolling Menus
Pie menus may be limited to a certain number of slices (like 8), so that the pie slices are wide and easy to select. If there are extra items, then they are clustered into groups of the same number outside of the pie. You can select any of the extra items by pointing directly its label.
Each group of items is arranged like a compact pie menu of the same number of items (or fewer). You can scroll the pie menu to any group by clicking in the center of the group, and the menu will center on the labels. The "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys also scroll the pie from group to group.
Keyboard Controls
Pie menus support several keyboard accellerators.
Escape or Delete: Cancels the entire menu tree.
Backspace: Moves back to the previous menu in the tree.
Home: Centers the menu on the current cursor position.
Return: Selectes the currently highlighted item, or cancels the menu if nothing is highlighted.
Arrows: Points to the top, bottom, left, or right slice. If you press two orthogonal arrows at once, it points to a diagonal slice.
Numeric Keypad: Selects the item in the direction of the key on the keypad. The 5 key selects the menu center.
Tab: Select the next pie menu item. Shift-Tab selects the previous.
Page Up: Scroll to the previous menu item group.
Page Down: Scroll to the next menu item group.
First letter of a menu item: Typing the first letter of a menu item selects the first item that begins with that letter. Typing that letter again selects the next and subsequent menu items beginning with the same letter.
ConnectedTV turns a Palm handheld into your personal TV guide and remote
Was some while ago, but on the PC I think B&W still recorded the gesture through the autosave, which means that when you trained your reflexes to not stop the movement when saving occured, it worked out alright.
Would it be possible to use hand gestures through a web cam? That would be easier and more fun than using a mouse.
Just think about sticking out your middle finger and have someone mod down as a troll.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
I searched Google, and after 15 minutes the only thing I was able to get was the French version 1.07.
Anybody got the freeware ENGLISH 1.07?
I remember a windows utility called Pointix Scroll+ and later Pointix engine and then pop mouse. (http://216.128.205.5/shareware/apps/98/mouse.html #2831).
It was really generic mouse gesture program which popped up menus if you wiggled your mouse about. I liked it but people who started working on my computer could not understand it The company who made it has gone to dotcomhell or something but maybe we will see more of them trying to sue Mozilla and opera. If anyone wants to try it I found a version here
When I am beating off to dirty dirty p0rn I love mouse gestures. One handed browsing has never been easier. I can use left hand on a regularly right handed mouse, while my right hand is busy doing "IMPORTANT THINGS!" I only need to let go of the mouse to invoke the Taoist $10,000,000 spot. (If you don't know what I mean you have wasted a lot of Hankes...)
"The Internet, bringing your more porn faster."
"The best most consistant sex of your life will be with yourself."
If you are a NERD the ONLY consistant sex of your life will be with yourself.
CAD CAM wins by about 10 years.
It supports voice recognition as well. Every time I tell IE to fuck off, it crashes and disappears. Proof positive!
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
such as Logitech's Marble offering are great for browsing, 3-D and many games, however frustrating it is to do certain gestures and "drawing," I'm far more frustrated by mice, nubs, and fingerpads (electronic, optical, and biological). Now by optical, I mean the ball is read by the optical pickup directly and not through an opto-mechanical "middleman." Has anyone played with a Magellen?? I mean the cast iron (or some satisfactory equivalent) version...
hambientthememusic = "hummed://mine_eyes_have_seen_the_glory.foo";
If only more programs that make themselves dependant on a were as fluent as Opera or otherwise had a manual like that of Deluxe Paint 3 (Amiga days, kiddies) I would enjoy using the programs as much as the their marketing departments would like me to believe I would. Long live Opera and good programs like Tron.
end hambientthememusic;
FH - the otherwise reticent madman
Down with the MCP!
Modern mice normally have two or even *gasp* three(!) buttons!
Imagine controlling a Beowulf Cluster with mouse gestures!
You could tell it to slashdot a windows server with a single finger (guess which one)
1) Hold the right button and draw a $
2) ???
3) Profit
The blender interface has an interesting variation on this theme. To rotate/size an object you click and drag the mouse either elliptically or in a straight line and the program goes into the mode that you have indicated. It's a little bit like the shorthand you use on a palmtop.
Keyboard shortcuts versus Mouse Gestures... both have their strong points. Good browsers (Opera comes to mind) should support both.
:)
OTOH, throw in slow dial up and it doesn't matter what the hell kind of control you have.... you're surfing is limited by the bps of the link rather than your own twitch rate...
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I use Opera, but I don't use gestures for precisely that very reason - I don't like to train myself into using something I won't have available on all my workspaces.
OTOH, I broke my own rule and wired 2 of the 5 buttons on my mouse to fwd and back and use them to flip through web contexts. And Good Lord do I miss the scrollwheel when I don't have it or an app doesn't support it.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
evolution IS god.
From the article:
"The motion of performing a gesture is more natural than sliding the mouse over to a button or menu," he said. "And because it works anywhere in the window (not just on the button), it saves a bit of time and effort, especially as screens get bigger and you have to move farther to reach a button."
"as screens get bigger"?? Wouldn't it be easier to adjust the mouse sensitivity?
I just hope these gestures are easier to control than the ones in black & white (Where you had to get them pretty spot on, or your creature starts eating your followers.)
in those two seconds i could have had already accomplished what i wanted to to at least 3 times.
The best cure for insomnia is realizing that it is already time to get up. EsteEncanto.com - Blog on technology, urban
I've been mouse gesturing for a few years now... I barely ever touch my keyboard to navigate, I do all the following with my mouse: Open to new window Forward Backward Close Esc (stop) Home (top of page) End (bottom of page) Reload People who don't use mouse gesturing have no idea what they're missing!
Mouseassist.com that and yahoo had one of those browser customizing downloads that was geared to work with IE, but worked with most for managing gestures with your mouse. This is nothing new, and has been around for at least two years..just search google.
I've just read about mutant mules developing thumbs and making gestures with them. Now it's mice...
Hi, I believe "mouse gestures" are a good idea for people, like me, who tire of sore hands, wrists and forearms from using the mouse too much. 'Fraidy Kat
hey,
If anyone has even used the strokes-mode in (X)Emacs, I have taken that to the X level by writing what is a higher-level application of gesture recognition. Consider this:
Why should each application implement gestures differently? For example WM commands (close, kill, iconify, maximize, resize, etc.) apply to all windows. Then, within each application, you might imagine some application-specific gestures. This can all be done at the X level. I decided to take the elisp code that's been doing gestures in (X)Emacs since '97 and ported it to Common Lisp (using GNU CLISP). This implementation if CL is GPL'd, and has an implementation of Xlib (called CLX) that plugs right in.
Anyway, CLISP is just about as portable as gcc is, so the same goes for the CL version of strokes.
What I havn't done, though, is to build a nice GUI for editing all the different strokes bindings for all the applications.
I've been playing with the idea of releasing this for years so that people could control all their applications using gestures. I figured that someone probably has done this (though probably not in Lisp, which is a shame).
Are people interested in X-level gestures?
dave
Obviously, but that's only for training.
Also, it might be noted that Gestures and Pie Context have alot in common, because getting to the right menu is a kind of gesture, but you also have feedback on what is going to happen.
^_^
I implemented gestures for BeOS on a system-wide level, you can get the GPL'd software here:
http://www.bebits.com/app/2281
It is based on libstroke which can be easily used in any applications.
most of the linux desktops have this incoroprated, and its one of the reasons I stick with KDE, is for this very feature. Its not limitless, but its an excellent start.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(),
which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination
right 8^)
-- Linus Torvalds, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26
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