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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?
Isn't this pretty much the same idea that Apple had some time ago?
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At first I thought as you do, but then I started thinking of wide spreadsheets where this mouse would be QUITE handy.
Yeah, I've had a cheap $10 PS/2 mouse that's had two scroll wheels for a few years two. I don't use the horizonatal mouse button much, but it is handy, especially working in photoshop.
Give it a look
Oh don't troll. This is actually an interesting article. Although this might not be world-shattering it is still a pretty nifty thing. The uses for a trackball in the mouse would incredible for a gamer. Imagine instead of WASD layout you could have all movement and shooting controls on one hand with the other one free for equipment managment and chatting.
All you have to do is hold down the wheel and move to the left and right. At least it works that way in Microsoft's browser...
I used to have a mouse that had two scroll wheels on it, and that was 5+ years ago. I used it for both horizontal and vertical scrolling (though it was configurable what you could actually do with it).
Also, in some linux toolkits (gtk I believe, possibly others), you can scroll any scrollbar (no matter what direction it's in) just by putting the mouse over it and scrolling.
For example, in gaim, if your buddy list has a horizontal scrollbar, you can scroll horizontally by putting the mouse over the horizontal scrollbar and scrolling. Even better, it doesn't even have to be a scrollbar: on the experimental bittorrent client, you can scroll the little frob that controls the maximum number of uploads this way.
Fun stuff! I see little point in providing a hardware solution to a problem that was solved with software long, long ago.
You're right. Horizontal scrolling is horrible and painful...
with that said, I work at a financial firm where we have two-three LCD's per user, and even then, sometimes, data that generates to an excel spreadsheet takes up more horizontal space than that, and requires that kind of scrolling..
not saying it'll become a commonplace, but it surely has its applications..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
The innovation means that users will be able to scroll vertically as well as horizontally without using on-screen navigation bars.
Need I say more? This is a hardware solution for a software problem.
Whats next? WWW and email buttons on my computer? How about a Windows key to get in your way every time you go to use the left control?
When I was a windows developer (I've reformed), I got really loaded on coffee and hot chocolate mix and actually pulled the damned windows key off of my keyboard, drilled a hole in my office wall, and shoved it in there.
OK, what is this mouse for?
Why should a webpage know about care about or generaly have anything to do with display size? It should be formated to work as text on an arbitray sized screen. Or no screen at all for that matter. You know I allmost wish they made the liscence to use HTML revocable upon doing stupid things like flash, animated Gif's and anything else that strayed form the purpose of delivering information to all people no matter what there encumberances are.
No sir I dont like it.
I've been asking for a trackball in a mouse for a long time. It'd make working with large OrCAD and AutoCAD files alot easier.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Seriously, though, (folks,) I do find tend to find it useful for scrolling around wide program listings or for sites whose text column is narrow enough for my browser window, but is merely offset to the right for some vertical navigation bar or advertising column. I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago. I'm also surprised at the relative failure of the IBM TrackPoint (I think that's what they were called) mice -- a kind of sideways-saddle shaped version of the piezoelectric pencil-eraser-looking mice they like to put in their notebook keyboards, only where the wheel would otherwise be. I have one at work, and it's quite nice. Lots less *roll* *roll* *roll* *roll* when scrolling down a page; just pull it back a little and wait. Or pull it harder and wait less. (Did I just say that?) Anyway, it handles vertical and horizontal scrolling, which I find myself doing much more readily using that mouse. Oh, and there's a small button just past the TrackPoint thingy so you can do the equivalent of wheel-clicks.
The shame of it is, my company has a lot of these mice around, but no one has the drivers installed, and so the TrackPoint becomes completely useless. *Sigh*
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
/.ers lucky enough to use IBM Thinkpads can use the third mouse button to activate scrolling capability for the keyboard mounted TrackPoint. Interestingly, this works better than mouse mounted TrackPoint because you don't have to work to keep the keyboard still as you scroll.
As others have noted elsewhere in this discussion, there isn't nearly as much use for the side to side scrolling as the up/down. It is useful for navigating spreadsheets and large graphics files.
PS I know there is no such mod as CORRECT. However, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be.
Lasers Controlled Games!
No, it's not that simple.
Most languages are written horizontally. If you need to scroll to see the end of a line (be it on the left or the right) and in doing so are no longer able to see the begining of the next line and thus immediately will have to scroll back again, you will in general very quickly decide to go read something else. Also, the fact that normal reading is done "row major" also implies that the brain is a lot more sensitive to its "anchor points" moving about horizontally than vertically, even if the left and right borders constantly remain in full sight.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Erm, should have said more in that post. What I meant was, the middle finger is going to be moving from side to side. The middle finger just isn't designed to do this type of thing over and over again in that position (i.e. the position of the scroll wheel); it could be very damaging to the hand. I know I'm going to avoid mice that utilize these like the plague. I don't want the strain of a trackball combined with the strain of a regular mouse...That's like using two mice at once; the strain on the hand will be immense. I'm talking about FPS gaming here, it might not be that large of an issue for document/website browsing.
(Posting anonymously for fear of my employer...)
I'm not sure where you got that information from, but for the most part it is true. Consumers have been asking for this functionality for years now, and we strive to improve the user-friendly experience. We expect a vocal minority of complaints such as yours, but OEMs and businesses will happily empty their wallets for us.
To address your main concern though, most of the things you described are implemented in the mouse drivers. (We've been trying to get that sort of thing to be done in hardware, but it will be a longhorn time from now before the infrastructure is in place for those kinds of things) So, if someone codes up alternate drivers, your concerns may be alleviated.
On the other hand, we are working on proprietary encryption based mouse protocols for down the road, making such drivers both harder and illegal(DMCA)to produce. We don't expect this to be common place until 2008 mind you, so you'll have to wait a few years to enjoy those new features.
I've seen 4-way and 8-way trackballs in mice available. I've seen some models available at .
The trackball is actually fully directional. When used as a scrollwheel, the direction you spin it is treated as motion in one of 4 (or 8) directions. It can also be used to control the mouse pointer, but that disables the use of the optical mouse base as a mouse.
I've thought about getting one, but I'm waiting until it can be used as two independent mice (and driver independent). I'd think it would be good for gaming if you could control motion with the mouse and aiming/head movement with the trackball simultaneously, independently, and accurately. Be able to run any direction and fire at any other (within reason for your avatar's abilities). Running in an arc instead of predictable straight lines while still able to maintain your aim on the target.
I've also thought about a GUI that could handle two pointers usefully. For example, instead of grabbing the edge of a window to resize it, the user could just grab two points anywhere on the window and adjust/move it that way. It would free the user from the implicit paperweight model in current GUIs.
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The mouse will come in 2 flavors:
Genuine leather and vanilla plastic
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Why not just program the existing scroll wheel so that when held down, it behaves like the "hand" tool in Photoshop. Press down the middle button, and then drag the document around the window.
you mean kinda like this? I think it might be interesting, also somewhat along the same lines of wacky ergonomic keyboards.
Anyone else got links to weird "ergonomic" input device experiments?
I completely understand if some pages get a little overly wide at 640x480, and I have to scroll. (My TV PC runs at this resolution, fortunately I don't browse the web much except for TV listings for ShowShifter on TitanTV.com.)
I'm even tolerant of it happening at 800x600.
But when I run at 1024x768, full screen browser window on my desktop's LCD monitor, I get REALLY irritated with people who code their pages to be somewhere around 1080 pixels wide. Because at that resolution, unless there is a right-hand column of ads, you just lose the last 5-10 characters of text. And man, that is a pain in the butt.
And some of these are "professional" web pages. Like, people were paid obscene amounts of money to code them. Gah! I know they test browse on their fancy Apple Cinema Display 23" LCDs, but c'mon, try out the "average Joe" resolutions once in a while, PLEASE!
4D Optical Web Cruiser by iogear. Granted, it's not the exact same thing... it's far superior. Wonder why IOGear didn't get a BBC feature?
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
The Knob is a wheel, about 3cm in diameter, on a vertical axis, flush mounted on the keyboard. It turns very smoothly, probably on ball bearings. It controls either vertical or horizontal scrolling, depending on whether you're holding down the Shift key.
There are two major advantages to having a whole side of The Knob exposed, rather than just a quarter of the rim (as on mouse wheels).
First, you're making a smoother movement for long distance scrolling, because you don't have to keep moving your finger off and back onto the device.
Second, there is an intuitive way to vary your scrolling speed: touch The Knob near its axis to go faster, or near its rim to go slower.
Scrolling devices don't necessarily belong on the mouse!
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