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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/
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
"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.
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....