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New Microsoft Mouse Scrolls Both Ways
Library Spoff writes "The BBC are reporting that Microsoft are bringing out a mouse that will use the scroll wheel to tilt as well as roll. The innovation means that users will be able to scroll vertically as well as horizontally without using on-screen navigation bars." How long before I get a trackball embedded in my mouse?
i already have an ibm mouse that does this. have had it for 3 years
Everyone else got one 5 years ago...
I was browsing thinkgeek and ran across this mouse. Sounds like this is old news.
with the track point in their mice...Here's one!
...You mean like the Tecstorm TSOTS1?
= PROD&Store_Code=HO&Product_code=MI14032
http://www.tecstorm.co.uk/tsots1.htm
Another link - http://www.hardwareoptions.com/merchant.mv?Screen
I'd honestly never heard of it before this article, but after reading the idea of a mouse with a trackball in it, the idea seemed intriguing, so I did a quick Google for "trackball in mouse" and found that one... Looks interesting... Anyone ever used one?
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
IBM had this before Apple, my roommate's IBM Athlon 800 (800MHz was a new thing to Athlons when he bought it) came with one of these things.
When no vertical scrolling is sensible (like a wave editor) the scrollwheel should cause horizontal scrolling. I've seen this trick in quite a few apps. The point is that there's very little need for two dimensional scrolling, it's mostly an "either-or" situation.
You might want this if you something else other than view web pages.
Many peoples documents, source code or whatever needs to be scrolled horizontally.
It might not be all that original but I think it could be very worthwhile.
One of the reasons the scroll wheel is successful is because it's comfortable.
Why? Your knuckles allow your finget to curl with your finger remaining parallel to the side of your hand.
However, a side scrolling wheel requires either
(i) an awful lot of play in your knuckles, allowing you to curl them to be non-parallel with the side of your hand, or
(ii) bending the wrist to move your entire hand side-to-side.
Neither is particularly comfortable, and both result in sore hand parts quite quickly. I predict that this will never be used much... too tough on the hands.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Hey guys!
I see many replies about other mice with second scroll wheels or a built in trackball.
This mouse let's you TILT the scroll wheel. That is the innovative part here. And personally I think that's gonna be much more usable than a second scroll wheel or a trackball on your mouse.
Cheers,
Andre
I have two of them. It's my favorite by far....instead of a wheel, it's got a trackpoint (eraser-thing like on some laptops) there. The trackpoint doesn't move the cursor, but it does scroll. And it works vertically and horozintally.
If it had a 3rd button, it would be the best mouse ever.
Wheels suck.
teeker
IBM's trackpoint mouse does this and has been shipping for several years.
t ml
http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/healthycomputing/indev.h
I have both IBM and Microsoft mice, and I prefer the scroll wheel. It requires less effort to go really fast for short distances.
Internet Explorer (5.5) supports horizontal scrolling with the trackpoint on the mouse, but Mozilla (1.4) does not.
Hmm, there are probabilities that are larger than 1? :)
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Thats what they put a full screen mode in for.
ALT+SHIFT+ENTER I believe.
I've seen mice with two wheels, one for horiz and one for vert at Best Buy.
If you hold ALT and scroll up and down you will move through your browsers history, at least on the Mozilla family.
It's still a "No". Basically it sounds like the Apple patent would have had a disc laid flat along the xy plane, and so would have been exactly like putting the four arrow buttons on the mouse. Microsoft takes the scroll wheel (which is along the yz plane) and gives it lateral movement. The functions of the two systems are the same, but the interface is different. Besides, at least Microsoft will actually MAKE the damn things, meanwhile Apple has yet to produce a mouse that does what's in its patent.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
These IBM mice are called ScrollPoint and they are still being made. I am using a recent optical version right now. These are my favorite mice and I had to order mine from US (those are only available here in Europe with a complete system from IBM)
What force to counteract? When I am using a mouse, the back of my hand still touches the tabletop, so pulling this hand away by moving the same is equivalent to pulling yourself up by the ears.
I find those mice a much better idea than the Microsoft-style wheeled mice, because:
1. You can also scroll horizontally.
2. If you want to keep scrolling, just push the stick into desired direction and hold. With a wheel, you have to keep scrolling. The harder you push the stick, the faster you scroll. Wheeled mice are only good for contant-speed scrolling.
3. I still have a full-width middle button. Your typical mouse wheel is not really a very convinient button for prolonged use (say, paste in X)
The mice are very well made and look cool, especially that blue LED backlight inside the little stick. (which is quite a bit larger and more comfortable too than the little clit they put onto laptop's keyboards)
Overall, I'd rate the ScrollPoint as one of the most significant advancements in HCI, to which effect it also won some awards. As usual, IBM can neither hype it properly themselves, nor make the related patents properly accessible to other manufacturers.
I think that you are looking for converges to rather than approaches. Things that "approach" infinity are divergent.
...and looked it up. Turns out they call it "ScrollPoint". You can see one here. Mine is an older model, and so doesn't look like that, isn't that color, and isn't optical. Still, looks like they do still make them.
Just for the record, for a general laptop mouse, I don't particularly like those TrackPoint ones; I prefer the touchpad kind. But as a scrolly deal, it's pretty neat. I just wonder when someone will try to put a touchpad on a regular mouse.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Logitech and MS's windows mouse drivers both already have options to do that. Internet Explorer has that built in even if you don't use the driver option. And you can get the Autoscroll extension to do the same thing in Firebird. There's probably a way to do it in straight mozilla too, but I haven't tried it since Phoenix 0.5 came out :)
We just say it the "incorrect" way in English because "approaches infinity" and "approaches three" look pretty much the same when written in math. That doesn't make "approaches infinity" correct though; the correct terminology is "increases without bound".
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
What, you mean this old thing?