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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.
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.
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
For mouse gestures in all your favorite window programs try 'stroke it' (heh, nice name). Link included... http://www.tcbnetworks.com/strokeit/forum/
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 use gestures just fine in Opera with my track ball.
Especially the best ones: right-left click (back in history), left-right click (forward in history)
But the other ones (close window, etc.) also work, sometimes I have to repeat once or twice, though I think "Ctrl-W" is the best gesture for that.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
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.
Sensiva . It has a linux port (what more could you ask) but it is trainable. While the newest versions cost money, the earlier versions like 1.07 are free and have all the functionality. You can prolly find some of them roaming around the internet still.
Sensiva does all that. You can program the gestures to input text. Nothing is cooler than having multiple term windows open, and cleanly logging out with just a slash.
I don't know about Opera, but if you use Mozilla's mouse gestures, you can customize them. Try reading Optimoz's customizing page.
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;
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!
Other than those two, the only other action I perform really frequently is probably "Back", which I have a side button on my mouse for. I realize most people probably don't have a back button on their mouse; I used to use the keyboard for this rather than drag the cursor up to the toolbar. But still... hyperlink clicking and scrolling is like 90% of web surfing to me. I suppose I could use the arrow or page keys for scrolling (and I tend to for long articles), but switching back and forth between mouse and keyboard all the time is a pain.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
So how is this going to work with my track ball?
Actually, quite well. I actually use the radial context menus on Mozilla set to only activate when the right mouse button is dragged. Essentially, this allows for "normal" operation in most cases, and mouse gesture operation with right dragging (plus I get a little reminder gui if I don't remember what gesture to do).
I use a Microsoft optical trackball (the one with the thumb ball) and I've migrated almost exclusively to mouse gestures and it works great. One nice thing is that the length of the strokes of the gesture don't matter, so you can spin the trackball and use a larger gesture or just one small stroke and you get the same response.
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.
Actually, to stop any problems with copy-and-paste, you can go into Mozilla's Preferences, Advanced, Mouse Gestures, and change the default mouse button to the right mouse button (or middle / wheel, but I'm without one of those here at work). Since I've switched buttons, I've had no problems at all, even with right clicking for any reason.
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
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.
Nice troll?
Seriously, I don't know what planet you're on, but for me, mouse gesturing only happens when I click the RIGHT mouse button. I select text with the LEFT mouse button. I scroll with the MIDDLE button. I'm surprised you don't complain about getting the "context pop-up menu" when you try to select text as well.
The situation you're describing has (literally) NEVER happened to me and I've been using mouse-gesturing/pie-menus for a few months now.
-Michael
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.
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....
After using it for a couple months... I couldn't possibly live without it.
http://www.tcbnetworks.com/strokeit/
Looks like 2.5 is also freeware. Download it here