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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.
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.
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.
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/
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 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.
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.
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 give it gesture every day...
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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.
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 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!
"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.
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
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?
I do use Opera, and to go back, you hold down the right mouse button and drag left. (The section you quote does not make that clear.) Alternatively -- and this is better for trackball users -- you could hold down the right mouse button and click the left button once to go back. Essentially, Opera takes advantage of relatively easy but unused mouse motions to implement gestures. You can still select text for cut'n'paste, and right-click to access context-sensitive menus.
The gestural back and forward is great for web browsing. I find it much faster than the keyboard, since when I'm browsing, I almost always have my hand on or near my mouse, but I'm not always poised and ready to type. (Plus I type slow.)
Personally, I'd like gestures to be more configurable. I think Opera's gone a little overboard on creating some of these, so occasionally, I end up doing something like closing a window when I really wanted to open a new one. I'd like to be able to selectively disable the gestures I don't use -- presently, it's all or nothing. (At least in the version I'm using anyway.)
I can spell. I just can't type.
if penertration was deep enough, I doubt they would be masterbating.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
... 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...
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....
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.
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