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.

Comments

They did the same in the game Black And White

[ClickNMix]

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?

Only the keyboard?

[Wraithlyn]

"Personally, I almost solely use the keyboard as input device"

Even for web surfing??

Re:Only the keyboard?

[ChaosDiscord]

Personally, I almost solely use the keyboard as input device

Even for web surfing??

Is it so shocking? I often use Links, w3m, or even the old standby Lynx for browsing. These fine console browsers have almost no mouse support and are plenty usable.

All of the major browsers support full navigation with the keyboard, and I use them frequently. (Galeon even supports vi-like keybindings, bringing me endless glee.)

For various reasons it sometimes makes sense to keep your fingers on your keyboard. If I'm in the middle of hard core coding, it's faster to Alt+Tab to Galeon to reference something, scroll down the page, and chase a link than it is to grab the mouse. Grabbing the mouse can break my concentration, my zone, when deeply engaged in code. For skilled users who are familiar with the system, a keyboard can be a significant speed win, even when referencing something on the web.

(Yes, yes, yes, the all knowing Tognazzini has told you that the mouse is always faster. Unfortunately Tog has only shown this for novice or adequately skilled users. He doesn't seem interested in studying heavy duty users. If I'm going to be using a piece of software for eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks per year, perhaps it makes some sense to investigate an interface that keeps your hands on a keyboard. I was particularlly struck by the importanance of this while checking into a convention several years ago. Each attendee gave several pieces of information to a staff member which the staff member entered into a form on screen. After each piece of information, each staff member would cast about for their mouse, slowly navigate to the next entry, click, then slowly reset their hands on the home row. Repeat this for 10,000 attendees and you have some serious time wasted. Teen years ago every one of those staff members would have been familiar with using Tab to switch between fields and would have been able to enter information limited by their typing speed. Wow, this parenthetical comment really got off track, huh?)

Re:Check out the radial context thingie from optim

[*xpenguin*]

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.

Reasonable use of gestures

[AlecC]

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.

Re:Reasonable use of gestures

[wbattestilli]

I agree with this and would like to make a second point.

I work for Alias|Wavefront. We make Maya. It has a fantastically efficient and powerful UI that is based around gestures. To see people working with Maya, who use it professionally, is quite amazing. I also have to say that it has a very steep learning curve and is way beyond what you can expect from Joe User.

For gestures to work efficiently, there can be no visual feedback while executing the command. If there is visible feedback, your interface is basically reduced to multidirectional menues. Maya can be used this way but it is no better than using the standard pulldown menues.

I love gestures in Galeon/Opera/Mozilla, but I think that they should be left to the power user and that they should be used sparingly in applications.

Re:i should use this.... why?

[Kwil]

As has been mentioned above.. when navigating the web, one hand is likely already on the mouse. The gestures quickly become second nature, more-so I'd say than the appropriate keyboard press, and require less concentration than using the mouse to find the appropriate button on the top tool-bar. (Plus allow full control while in full-screen mode, without requiring a context shift from keyboard to mouse.)

Of course, this all depends on having simple mouse-gestures for the most used features. Opera's "back" and "forward" mouse gestures are so intuitive that it very quickly becomes a pain to use browsers that don't have the ability.

Im gonna have to vote no on this one...

[rosewood]

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.

Pray tell

[pclminion]

Which web browser had gestures before Opera?

"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.

Re:Pray tell

[Bat_Masterson]

A better word would've been "popularize".

The word "introduce" gives a sense of possessiveness to the thing being introduced. That may be unintentional, but that's the way many people view the word.

Re:Mouse gestures were not "introduced in opera"

[silvaran]

Computers were introduced to me when I was 6 years old, by my father. Consequently, he didn't invent them, but he did introduce them. Similarly, Opera brought their web browser to the masses, and mouse gestures along with it. Just like Microsoft introduced GUI to the masses, they didn't invent it, and weren't the primary people to actually "introduce" it first. Opera is the first application I've ever used that supported gestures, and I would imagine many people are in the same situation.

Re:And with my track ball?

[SacredNaCl]

After having a non-active KVM switch (and browsing in W2K w/Opera)for far too long. I got really good with keyboard shortcuts for most things. Turn switch, lose mouse ... Now that I have an active switch I still use most of the shortcuts. I find them faster than using the mouse for most things.

My favorites in Opera: Ctrl-F4/Ctrl-W (closes window), Ctrl-N opens new window, 1 cycle backwards through windows, 2 cycle forwards through windows -- even with a scrollpoint I still prefer to page down or arrow key through the open window. Shift-click (open in new window), Ctrl-Shift-Click (open in new window in background). Alt-Tab (brings up list of all open pages and can cycle through them). Ctrl-Shift-W (Close all windows).

I played around with the gestures for a day or so, but never really got used to it. I appreciate the thought, but developers serve me better by making lots of keyboard shortcuts for various task and having some standization in them.

Re:geek snobbishness

[Quill_28]

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.

Re:Mouse Gestures and radial context menus

[SilentTristero]

The idea of radial context menus is they are self-documenting. You can start by looking at the menu, and then after a while the ones you use become second nature. You don't even really have to "learn" them, as opposed to gestures, which, while obviously not so difficult, still have to be looked up somewhere until you get used to them.

And if there's a rarely used gesture, it's utterly useless. In a radial menu, you can at least wait for the menu to show up and then follow its cues.

If a radial menu is well-designed, it becomes pretty similar to a set of gestures. Unfortunately the Mozilla radial menus use tiny hard-to-read icons and so are much too slow to actually use. But in other systems with text menus, they're quite fast to use and learn.

-- Tristero