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?

Comments

/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

From Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes 2002:

3. Horizontal Scrolling

Users hate scrolling left to right. Vertical scrolling seems to be okay, maybe because it's much more common.
Web pages that require horizontal scrolling in standard-sized windows, such as 800x600 pixels, are particularly annoying. For some reason, many websites seem to be optimized for 805-pixel-wide browser windows, even though this resolution is pretty rare and the extra five pixels offer little relative to the annoyance of horizontal scrolling (and the space consumed by the horizontal scrollbar).

So now why do I want this mouse?

John.

Re:/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[badboy_tw2002]

You want it so you can easily deal with all the jerks that don't make their webpages to size.

Also, spreadsheets often require a lot of left/right scrolling, and if you work with them a lot this will be a big improvement. If its as easy as the mousewheel to use, I'm all for it.

Don't hate it just because its from Microsoft. Evaluate the technology for what it is.

Re:/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[Captain_Frisk]

I don't see this as a tool for scrolling left in web pages, but rather very handy when working with image manipulation software.

Its definetly not a radical innovation, but it would ne a nice feature to have every once in a while.

Also, I bet it could come in handy in games, particularly the more recent fps games, where there is more than just fire and jump to have to worry about.

Re:/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[neglige]

So now why do I want this mouse?

I asked myself the same thing a few years back when the mouse wheel was up'n'coming. Can't live without it now...

But I guess it is easier for the finger to stretch forward and backward, rolling the wheel up and down than to move sideways. Perhaps strained pointing fingers will be the next sign for exessive computer usage (OT: I managed to hurt my hand with an old Atari 2600 joystick. Don't ask).

Re:/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[margycdb]

Maybe the reason this is so annoying is because we now don't have easy horizontal scrolls. If everyone buys one then websites will start being bigger horizontally so you have to scroll and then you will need it, quite likely.

Wow, the mob mentality for mice.

Re:/. parrotting Micro$oft product announcements?

[arth1]

Why you want this mouse?
Simple. Microsoft also just came out with Flight Simulator 2004 (aka FS9), and this product was really required to be able to fly with a mouse.

Seriously, now we're only one step away from getting a clit^H^H^H^Htrackpoint on top of the mouse, like on IBM laptops. What's next? A miniature touch pad on each button?

What I'd like to see is a mouse that's shorter and wider, that you can hold when your hand is half-closed (which is the natural position), with four buttons, one for each primary digit. Tilt your mouse 90 degrees to the left, grab it, and feel what I mean. Not all this wheel stuff and 8 hard-to-reach buttons that you really only press by accident.

Regards,
--
*Art

I don't want horizontal scrolling.

[garcia]

I want webpages to be designed like they currently are. For people that use 800x600 or 1024x768 (like they should) there is little need to scroll horizontally.

Let's not allow this to become commonplace. I would prefer that all information is easily seen on a single page.

Sweet..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. I can bind the new controls to lean left/right in FPSs. :)

Who says this is for web browsers?

[Schezar]

Say you have a folder filled with, I don't know, mp3s. Many of them.

Notice how the window's contents are arranged HORIZONTALLY? Seems a horizontal scroll-thingie would me mighty useful in this situation.

Or how about wave editing? It would be nice to mouse-scroll across the waveform HORIZONTALLY.

Just some thoughts.

Re:Who says this is for web browsers?

[moonbender]

Notice how the mouse wheel already scrolls window's contents that are arranged horizontally? At least it does that for me. I don't really see a lot of use for another wheel at least in file system explorers. I'm not sure about wave editing - maybe the same can be applied. Generally, the scrolling wheel is just that, a scrolling wheel. There's no reason why it should only be used for scrolling up and down, and conversely it's been adapted for many other uses: scrolling sideways, zooming in and out, switching items or weapons in games, and so on.

Now I really don't mind if Microsoft "innovates" and "creates" a four-way mouse wheel - of course, it's not much of an innovation, since mice with additional means to scroll in another dimension have been around for years, but I don't mind the occasional evolutionary step, either. Apart from the first introduction of the mouse wheel (who did that, incidently?), it's been mostly evolution and not revolution for the mouse interface in the last n years, including the allegedly revolutionary step towards optical sensors.
However, I'm a bit dubious if this will work well. Previous designs I've seen had a second wheel, some of them even had a wheel that actually rolled horizontally. I doubt they were comfortable to use, especially the last variant. (Try scrolling an imaginary horizontal wheel - not exactly comfortable.) From the sounds of the article, the existing mouse-wheel will tilt left and right, making it sound a bit similar to a coolie-hat on joysticks, maybe something like a cross between wheel and coolie-hat. Hohumm. It's better than a horizontal wheel, but it still requires horizontal finger movement, which sucks. There's also the question of accidently tilting the wheel when you only wanted to scroll or click.

An approach I'd prefer would be a simple software solution, using one of the mice's many (superflous, IMHO) modifier buttons. One of the thumb buttons on my mouse would do very nicely: if pressed, the wheel scrolls horizontally, if not it's the typical vertical scrolling. Obviously this would only make sense in apps which routinely scroll both ways, like spreadsheets. Note that this kind of thing is already routinely done in games! Not really with sideways scrolling, but it's extremely common to have the right mouse button function as a modifier making the wheel zoom instead of scroll or toggle etc.
Of course, this wouldn't let Microsoft sell new hardware, so I guess this doesn't appeal to them a whole lot.

Anyway, I don't mind this. I'll try it, but I doubt I need it, so I guess I can save money by not buying a mouse with this feature. Then again, I'm sure people also said that when mouse wheels were first introduces, so what do I know. =)

Oh and for the record, I'm using a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer right now - fine device!

Well,

[frodo from middle ea]

Its high time some one comes up with better ergonomic tools than the keyboards and mice of this generation.

As the average time we spend on these machines increases so does the damage to our fingers and wrists.

Also a zero decible CPU and a monitor least stressful on eyes would be nice.

its physiology

[jonnyfivealive]

my fingers dont do horizontal bending when on a mouse. its that simple. they bend sort of front to back when on a mouse, which is convienent for a vertical scroll, not a horizontal one.

i do think it would work for the thumb, tho...

Uhm..

[MImeKillEr]

Wouldn't it just be easier to use a trackball?

I mean, with this new mouse you still have to move the thing around in order to move the pointer. You get full X and Y axis movement using a trackball now and it remains in the same place on your desk. You don't even need to clear your collection of empty RedBull cans in order to use it.

Plus, its easlier to play FPS using a trackball.

This is news?

[twifkak]

Because it's done by M$? Because it's done via "tilting"? 4-D mice are not new.

2 wheels
1 wheel (presumably via kybd modifier)
a trackball

Move along, people, nothing to see here. Please, go back to slamming Real or something much more important.

Re:Wow - how innovative!

[Telex4]

I wish I could do this on my Macintosh with my generic two-button scoll mouse.

Oh, wait (holds down command key) I can scroll horizontally. In any application. With no new drivers, equipment, or fuss.

Yay for Mac OS X, I guess. What's the big deal again?

Why is it that whenever a company people dislike (with good reason in this case) releases some new technology, everybody jumps to show that their new technology is stupid, or redundant, or both? You can be sure that if Apple released this exact same product, people like you would be extolling its virtues.

So yay, it's a new mouse idea, and maybe it will catch on and prove useful in some areas (like a large spreadsheet maybe, where you need horizontal scrolling and may already be employing your command key). Maybe then a company that we find agreeable will make a similar product and we can all go and buy our new dual-scrolling mouse.

Re:Hardware solution for a software problem

[Politburo]

How about a Windows key to get in your way every time you go to use the left control?

Lay off the coffee, and learn the keyboard layout. The windows key is a very well designed key, imo. Aside from providing quick access to the taskbar and start menu, the windows key shortcuts provide access to core windows functions without confusing applications or users. Win+D: Show Desktop, Win+F: Find, Win+Break: System Properties, Win+L: Lock Station, and there are several more. These shortcuts do not work using the Ctrl+Esc substitute for the Windows key.

With respect to WWW and Email buttons, if they can be reconifigured, these buttons can serve as a keyboard quick launch bar. I had an IBM keyboard with launch buttons and volume controls and it was great until they decided not to write a Win2k driver for it.

Human Interfaces will *always* be a hardware problem, and in many cases, will require a hardware solution. It's just the nature of the beast.

Re:Hardware solution for a software problem

[og_sh0x]

What I want to see more than anything else is a utility that will turn the Windows key off for a while, and in the future I would like to see ALL games disable this button during play. The only time the Windows key annoys me is when I'm playing a game and it brings me back to desktop, where meanwhile I'm dying inside the game with no control.

Re:Double wheels

[zeno_2]

Of course if you click the wheel of any sort of wheel mouse, this lets you scroll in all directions (if the page can be horizontally scrolled). This seems to be a lot easier then having to use a trackballtype scroll device on top of the mouse. (most scrolling is up and down, easier to do with a fixed wheel then a ball that can go in any direction). Thats my .2c anyway..

An Excuse for Bad Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to be part of the continuing trend that everything from the default Windows directory structure to the MMC interface to just about all their documentation uses an identifier that is closer to a sentence than a name.

The help documentation (CHM files) are particularly amusing. When a help file is opened, the default size is maybe 150 or so pixels in width. Works for the first page, but once you start reading content, you find the need to go full screen to accommodate the page. Even with that, the TOC never fits.

Could be that this the cause for this lies somewhere between accomodating user preferences (read "stupidity") to poorly thought out (read "bad") design. There are very few programs that deserve an expansive chunk of screen real estate. That said, most everything else should be made to fit without having to scroll horizontally.

Re:Hardware solution for a software problem

[pavon]

But the scrollwheel is a good solution to what was perceived as a software problem, while internet buttons are not.

1) Having a peice of hardware to directly perform a task is faster than using a harware device to manipulate a software control.

2) There the amount of space available for hardware controls is limited compared to the amount of possible software controls. :.) We should pick the most often executed tasks to dedicate hardware controls to and implement the rest in hardware.

Scrolling is something that users do very often. Compare this to launching your web browser, something I only do a dozen times a day (more if it doesn't have tabbed browsing). I probably scroll my webbrowser a dozen times each time I open a new web-browser window. When you take into account the fact that I browse many other windows as well, so see that a scrolling frequency is at least two orders of magnitude compared to launching your web browser.

Further evidence of this difference is the fact that I am not annoyed when I have to use a computer without internet keys, but having to do without a scroll mouse is now a major inconvience, once I got used to having one.

I would definatly put side scrolling on the list of things that ought to have optional hardware controls, as it would be invaluable for CAD and such. I don't know how effective this design for side-scrolling is - I'd have to test it. I would think a tool that let you pan freely in 2D would be more usefull for those applications. Perhaps a dedicated "pan" key or mouse button, where when you held it down, moving the mouse itself pans the document. I know there have been studies on this but I can't remember the conclusion. (and i'm certain simular things have been done in applications)

I want a mouse with eraser head

[WeeGadget]

I want a mouse with one of those laptop eraser head thingys in it.

Mouse moves the cursor, eraser head moves page underneath cursor.

Also make the eraser head a button click when pressed down. Don't know what for... but sounds neat.

Jono

Easy Solution

[Arandir]

Before the world goes and congratulates Microsoft for putting the entire damned keyboard on the mouse, let's stop and think a bit...

I've been using a trackball for years, and will never go back to a mouse. Recently I tried a new trackball that had a scrollwheel. It was so damned superflous it wasn't even funny. Why not just use the trackball? A little side button to click to put it into scroll mode, and then use the trackball to scroll vertically, horizontally, diagonally, or any other direction you can manage to contort.

Frankly, today's mice have too many controls. And this is coming from a guy who demands three buttons! Don't put funky little doodads between the buttons. Don't hide wierd clicky thingies on the side or put them below the regular buttons. If people want them, sure go ahead and market them. But keep the standard pointing device simple. With a trackball and three buttons, all the controls you need are there already.