Slashdot Mirror
Mouse Gestures in Javascript
christodd writes "I have become big fan of mouse gestures, a feature included in Opera, Mozilla, and MyIE2. There's even a plugin for IE. Other programs like StrokeIt and Cocoa Gestures are also based around the concept. I can't believe nobody else has thought of this before, but what about mouse gestures in javascript? Turns out that it is incredibly simple to implement, and really handy for those 'feature incomplete' web browsers. Unfortunately, for the total user experience, we'd have to upgrade the whole internet..."
dont forget fvwm, create your own mouse gestures, 'Strokes', and bind them to any action/command.
KICKS ASS.
I'm all for the idea of faster, better, stronger ways of browsing. I happen to think that mouse gestures and browser level code should be based in the browser, and controlled by the browser. Like look at all the gestures you get with Mozilla.
(mo: Don't invent the wheel: we have it already)
The problem I forsee with the jscript use, is a misuse of the mouse gesture jscripts by unethical sites. Because it's the planet Earth, and The Internet, half of the sites will impliment this correctly, the other half will use it as a joke, or for annoying adverts (browser interstitials) and thus cause the whole thing to be crap.
If it's at a browser level, websites can't fuck with it. So ideally, browsers will want to add the ability to block javascript mouse control, and promptly add this cool feature at a browswer level. I'm all for the idea of mousegestures, but I'm against the ability to tell a website to fuck off using them. (mo: KISS).
Or you could have your filtering proxy (like Proxomitron or Privoxy) insert the JavaScript code on every page. Though personally, I'd just use a browser that suppots it.
Another annoying feature that wannabe web designers can add! Oh well. At least I don't have to worry about it. *Makes sure Disable Javascript is checked*
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
Oh no, another way for web designers to force their favorite settings on viewers. Not only do we have to watch their awful, completely unreadable choice of colors, now their mouse gesture settings will also be forced upon us. Guess it won't be long until we will also need to right-click on links, when watching a left-handed persons web page.
I did something like this a dozen years ago for a CAD program - was seriously happy stuff. In that environment, it was excellent to have the common operations mapped to simple gestures that could be done anywhere on the screen.
In the world of a clumsy third button on the mouse, it's a little stickier. Handy goodies, is about time someone cooked up the same ideas in a more 'portable' form.
I'll be honest here, I still don't understand why anyone would want to use mouse gestures. No one seems to be able to provide a believable reason other than "but it's cool". Anyone?
It would be nice if, for once, web technology was developed that made content more accessable to people with disabilities instead of less.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I've never been much of a fan of mouse gestures. Whenever you see someone using them, there's a rapid flick of the wrist in some angled direction... that can't be good for you if repeated often...
:-).
In general I don't have much sympathy for RSI sufferers. (I was going to put sufferers in quotes, but thought better of it
I use a keyboard something like 8 hours a day, and have done for the last 15 years, programming computers. If anyone is a prime candidate, it's me, and no RSI as yet. On the other hand, I'm reasonably careful - I don't hammer the keyboard, and I try to rest all my forearms on the desk in front of the keyboard. Sensible things to minimise the effect... unlike "gestures", which are just a disaster waiting to happen, IMHO.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
If that site is supposed to be a demo, it does not serve the purpose well; it doesn't work at all in Mozilla (1.5).
Being a web developer I cannot imagine how mouse gestures are a step in the right direction considering the trend of creating more accessible web sites.
Actually ... mouse gestures are better implemented as Pie Menus.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Now web pages will start doing unknown random shit just because you moved the mouse over them. Great! Just great.
Maybe if we're really lucky, these pages will cause our web browsers to suddenly kick on some dormant javascript subsystem and our system performance will drop about half unexpectedly.
I spent big bucks on my Logitech 700MX and it has back and forward buttons right next to my thumb. It helps a lot, and it's a whole lot easier that the gestures. Furthermore, I could probably end up doing some of these gestures by accident.
How about just creating a web-page with frames and mouse-gestures enabled, and then surf all other pages through this?
I use Opera, so I don't have this problem, but I'm sure it could be handy with other browsers...
In KDE 3.2 you can control the entire desktop with mouse-gestures, not just browser.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Honestly, it's a pretty stupid idea. Let me illustrate why: scroller mice. Once you get used to a scroll mouse, then you have to use a computer that just has a normal mouse, it's a major pain.
If you depend on every web page to implement mouse gestures, then you'll get this effect from page to page while you're browsing! It would be annoying to no end. And it's not an easily visible thing you can check for, unless each web page also uses some kind of cheesy "Gestures Enabled" logo. And each site might implement it differently, so that strokes mean different things from page to page. I repeat: stupid idea.
A user interface tool should be just that: part of the user interface. Just like a keyboard or mouse, gestures take time to become accustomed to. A user interface feature needs to act the same way no matter what you're doing.
...
My first ooops with javascript gestures: I tried to select/copy the text to send it to a few pals so that in case (more like when) it get's slashdotted they can read it. I selected the text at the top, pulled down and to the right, and the window closed (as it should).
It only took a few seconds to notice the status bar at the bottom which indicates if a gesture will be activated when you release the click... keep an eye on that when using using these. You can see if the gesture is 'blank' = it's not going to run an action. Quite handy, pretty cool. I've already grabbed the
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
(mo: in other words, modus operandi, Mozilla)
Rather than say ie, which is a sick twisted way for Microsoft boobs to get in my head, I replace it with mo, for Mozilla. It doubles for the term modus operandi, but in a kind of twisted way to mean "in other words", or the "specific meaning".
Okay you can all laugh at me now.
Optimoz gestures are implemented in Javascript.
After years of using Lynx I thought something neat was to be found here but it doesn't work ...
Actually... Mozilla's gestures *are* implemented in javascript. Download the Optimoz MozGest .xpi file (or find it on your hard drive), open the .xpi file in winzip, and there's all the .js implementation for it.
Yeah, and you make it with the middle button!
#define DRM chmod 000
when I try to select text the system thinks I want to go back or forward in history. Inconvenient.
Of course I understand this is just an example of what you can expect but I really think it would be of a better use in an image editor or something like that.
Never tried the feature in Opera or others... I definitively have to see how they did implement that. An excellent idea for sure.
Iraq: war to save the U
What's the point with that?
How would we know what they think is a useful mouse gesture? I'd hate to accidentally move the mouse up, and then down in a "gesture" to suddenly have the product pages of some company open.
If we don't decide what gestures are available and can apply them to all sites like a standard, then what's the point with them?
That's about as stupid to me as letting web developers decide which kind of keyboard shortcuts to use to browse web pages.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Assistive technology is oft forgotten by designers, and broken by would-be good guys.
Of course!
Step 1: Simultaneously click both the right and left mouse buttons.
Step 2: Keep rolling the wheel upwards.
Step 3: Move the mouse randomly while laughing maniacally.
I think that ought to do it.
- It breaks the right mouse button menu that users have come to expect.... Even in Firebird, the gestures are not noted in the status bar.
.js file).
- It wastes bandwidth, every page using it would need a copy of this Javascript snippet (or linked to a
There are good uses for javascript (example), where bandwidth can be saved and the user experience gains a net improvement. This, however, is just another bad use.
Just curious if anyone else noticed you can get a "Right-click" menu window to pop-up when you are on the JavaScript enabled MouseGesture website. I really hate JavaScript sometimes.
Second, the whole idea behind shortcuts and such is that every user has their own familiar shortcuts. If you just launch a site, you can't assume they've defined the mouse gestures/shortcuts that you use... so why would you use them anyways?
Also, I'm just wondering about the disaster that this is going to cause on all browsers that actually have mouse gestures enabled.
All in all, yet another reason why javascript should be retired.
Unfortunately, for the total user experience, we'd have to upgrade the whole internet...
Here's your idiot card, now play somewhere else.
The people who require the entire world to change in order to solve a real problem are already bad enough. We don't need clueless people with the same approach for a feature that they like, thank you.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Do NOT download MyIE2. It contains spyware.
Please use Opera or Mozilla Firebird instead.
I love using mouse gestures in Opera, and I'm glad that more browsers are actively supporting it. But, the whole idea of gestures at the site level seems bad. Like was mentioned earlier, I'm sure so cocky (no pun intended) porn site will set there mouse gestures up so that instead of close window (ya know, when the boss is coming) to bookmark page or set page as home. That would REALLY suck!! Let's just keep the whole javaGestures thing under your hat, shall we?
"It's like drinking a glass of sea monkeys, I don't want that!!" - Clinton Jackson on fresh squeezed orang
If I were into conspiracy theories, I'd say that someone deliberately distributes web page creation tools that pointlessly use features that tickle bugs in older browsers - eventually forcing upgrades.
Warning - this page is old-browser dehanced.
Netscape 3 has all the features I want in a browser, except one - it's buggy. It can format text and graphics. It does forms. It does ssl (security). It's small and very fast (except that it's cache slows rapidly, and you have to restart it frequently to maintain speed).
People say, what does it matter? New browsers are free. My response is that downloading a new browser over a 28.8 modem is not nearly free. Most users do not have what it takes to make it happen. They get a browser upgrade by buying a new system.
-- Stephen.
It would be really bad if someone has filed a patent for it.
I never really cared for mouse gestures. I did love the Black and White game I first saw it in but I never could get gestures down with a mouse and I never went far in Black and White because of it.
Now if there was something that could read my thoughts and interprate my actions based on what my brain does then you'd have something that could be really user friendly I think. Course that could open up a whole other can of worms too for ethics, security, and safty depending on how it's done.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I can't scroll the page to the place I want it to be. If I grab the thumbnail on the scroll bar, then drag it until it reaches the point I want the page to remain at, when I release the button, the page jumps to an entirely different place.
:I PT>
I also tried selecting some text, and it resized my browser window so that the bottom right is off the screen. I liked my browser the size it was, thanks!
Websites that are 'MouseGestures Enabled' are safer for viewers.
I don't think so. More annoying, perhaps...
Enhance your webpage with mouseGestures
Simply place this code in the head section of your website
<SCRIPT language=Javascript src="http://www.bitesizeinc.net/gesture.js"></SCR
What, so that when the referenced file is arbitrarily changed into a pop-up ad script, we can all earn money for you?
Thanks, but I'm not that stupid. I don't run code that I don't know the source of, and I especially won't pass such code on to my site visitors.
When you want to select text on a page using this script: Put the button down and make a circle, then select the text. This gesture system interprets making a circle to cancel the gesture and restore the default behavior.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A quick search through the USPTO database shows that in fact Amazon has already claimed the mouse-gestures patent, specifically referencing Javascript. Not only that, but they've also patented the one-gesture purchase, apparently to be implemented on their site at some point in the future.
It doesn't stop there, however. IBM claims that they patented this back in the 1980s, but didn't specifically mention a mouse but rather a generic input device. And SCO, in one of their counterclaims, says that gestures are part of the original UNIX and that in fact there are over a million instances of copyright infringement in both IBM and Amazon's patent filings.
And, if only that were the end of it. Disney has jumped into the fray with claims that Steamboat Willie has mouse gestures in it, reducing this to a boiling cauldron of copyright, patents, and trademark issues.
Perhaps the author of the Javascript code should look more carefully into possible IP infringement issues before posting what amounts to a boast on Slashdot about how novel and clever they've been.
Hope this helps.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
... mouse gestures have been used for years to draw electrical diagrams. Cadence's Concept, for example, has had "mouse stroke shortcuts" for quite some time (e.g., http://www.cadence.com/datasheets/concept_hdl_ds.p df).
With a name like StrokeIt, I would expect some sort of tactile-feedback interface that works with certain websites.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It appears that mouse gestures are the type ahead find of the windows world. Let me explain. In the Windows world you're stuck having to use the mouse for everything, where you can use the keyboard it's those damn arrow keys that aren't close to the rest of the keyboard. In the Unix world the mouse was more of an afterthought, you can use it, but it's generally a crutch. Once you become a master of the keyboard things go much faster.
While there are some mouse gestures that are difficult, maybe even impossible, with the keyboard (like open all links I just drug the mouse over), most are easily doable by a few keystrokes. Plus once you learn the keystrokes you never need to take your hands off the home row (ask a VI user how much faster this makes them).
Much of this inefficency is the result of the layout of keboards and mice and the time wasted in switching between them. In this respect the only well designed keyboard that I've used are laptop keyboards with the pointer stick. In such a keyboard, the mouse is just another key (more or less) in the middle and the buttons are easily accessible by the thumbs. This reduces switching time, but you still have delay because of the time to move the mouse that isn't there with keyboard shortcuts. Of course, maybe I'm just bitching because computers are accessible to most everyone now-a-days.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
...is never a good idea. There's no telling what it could change to tomorrow.
For those who couldn't get to the article, he suggests adding a script tag with this to your site:
language=Javascript src="http://www.bitesizeinc.net/gesture.js"
...we just couldn't be bothered.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If ever I saw a disaster in the making, this script is it. Another script to test on 23 different browsers. Another opportunity for site designers to pervert my browsing experience.
I don't have mouse gestures enabled in my browser. I don't want them. And seriously, the last thing I want is to see them imposed via the back door.
What's to stop a site owner redefining a gesture as "open a new window to goatse.cx"?
Don't forget Avant Browser! Its a MYIE2 style browser (based off of the ie browser engine). However it blows MyIE2 out of the water! Give it a try!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Can anyone elaborate? I use myIE2 and I've never noticed any adware/spyware. Thanks.
-Steve
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
gestures? I find the way Mozilla and Netscape 7.1 react to a upward wheel scroll and a left click to be incredibly annoying. I have search to see how to disable this, but I can't find it.
Since the page from the article is slashdotted, here's another example of a gestural menu made with javascript. I did this about 4 years ago, and the pages contain links to some of Xerox's original reserach on the subject for those who are terribly interested.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
No-one as yet has mentioned that it is GPLed code!
Hmmm, on closer inspection it appears to be copyrighted... Anyone care to explain to me how that works?
The Mozilla Gestures plugin is actually implemented in Javascript. So yes, someone has thought to implement them in Javascript. Look under your mozilla directory under chrome\mozgest\content, and you'll see the whole host of gestures javascript files.
I don`t care who you are, or what you make, but never should a product have the phrase "stroke it" in it unless you`re in the pr0n business. It just has the wrong implications!
This is inane.
Repeat after me:
"Web Standards."
It belabors the obvious to point out that this will never be implemented my more than a tiny fraction of sites, that it actively interferes with normal point/click/drag behaviors (like highlighting text? click, drag left->right?) and that learning PER-SITE navigation is simply ridiculous.
It's not that no-one's thought of it before, it's that it's a bad idea on the face of it.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
The web is actually Overfeatured .... i like that in my shell, in my compiler, etc,etc 'cause I manage what they are going to do. I can choose. But the Web is Public. We can't reinvent it every day just because some asshole that wants to sell something think that it would be nice to have this and that in his homepage. Actually, this happends because the people who decide is outside hackerdom, so, they don't understand what they are talking about, and how dificult to implement it will be, they just call the tecnical folks and tell them what they want. At that time they enter into a 'Delirium Tremend' state, they start talking about the animations, and video they want in their homepage, they don't understand this is just HTML!!!! ... then, the tecnical folks from that company can't say NO. But they can't do what the boss wants with the web. Then they decide the web has to change for them (when instead they should change to adapt they pages to the web standards.)
...
We can't continue like this. The web has turned into a mountain of extra software crap, that is just broken. Flash, javascript, etc,etc, they are just ugly hacks!, the web is not ready for that, 'cause it wasn't developed for that purpose. But They just don't care, and hack yet another 'feature' into the luser's browser
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
> I can't believe nobody else has thought of this before...
> we'd have to upgrade the whole internet
-=sig=-
Now that we've all downloaded and run the javascript from a foreign site, has anyone looked at the code to see if it contains any nasty elements, like a keylogger?
Are they catching my clicks as I type this, now?
(quickly turns around backwards...) What was that? They're WATCHING ME!
While this is not a solution to everything, I am really happy with my Microsoft IntelliMouse(R) Explorer 3.0. It gives me a right and a left button, a scroll-wheel that can also be pressed (pressing it down and moving the cursor enhances scrolling speed). Additionally, it has two, almost invisible, buttons right next to my thumb. In Windows, they are defaulted to work as Forward and Back in my browser, which means I don't need my keyboard at all.
:-)
I am a keyboard user - have always been. I tend not to use anything but my keyboard because having everything one place is just easier. Now my mouse can do the same! (And no, I am not looking for a 104-keyed mouse.
You shouldn't dismiss or even think about dismissing RSI will happen to you. When it strikes, you'll be quite surprised that it happened. I did a lot of computing for years (started hacking on machines in the early 80's on 8-bit CP/M machines) and was fine until the late 90's when I had a stressful job that required lots of continuous keyboard and mouse usage. It's the mouse that affected me the most though, and nowadays I can barely use one at all without pain. Thankfully I can still type a lot (so long as I take frequent breaks and use a good ergonomic keyboard, and avoid stress at all cost). I'm pretty much a 100% console user now, which is fine since current job now mostly involves programming and sysadmin tasks, though I do keep a small Cirque touchpad taped to the center of my keyboard for the occasional cut & paste (with gpm).
Anyway, the moral of the story is: RSI is no joke and not to be triffled with, and mice are much worse for you than keyboards.
I just put in an RFE for the next Lynx build. I hear it's gate-release.
mouse up: open 100000 copies of goatse.cx
mouse down: open 200000 copies of goatse.cx
mouse left: open 300000 copies of tubgirl
mouse right: email address is forwarded to 400000 porn spammers
mouse diagonally up and left, then swirling off in a curlicue to the right: information page on how to disable javascript in your browser (supposing it identified itself correctly).
A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!
It's a click. It's a scroll. It's a forward. It's a back.
But it has OTHER uses. Yes, far beyond that.
You can use it for cookies. For bookmarks! For links!
Or reloads! Or about anything you can think!"
-- appologies to Dr Seuss.
Well, somebody did think of it a long time ago.
:-)
I've known "strokes" since the late 80's in
IC design SW from Mentor Graphics and it's
still in use.
It's extremely efficient for graphics work
where you almost constantly use the mouse,
but otherwise I don't think more than 'cool'
--Michael
Modern applications should provide a shortcut to basically all user-visible feature (some apps actually do that.) For a browser, that would include shortcuts to jump between links, going back and forth, etc. Opera is close to that ideal, IE certainly does not.
With that... who needs a mouse?
So I propose the following document-oriented schema:
Links
1. Ctrl-b -> first link at the bottom of the (visible part of the) page. In general, Ctrl-shift-? to go into physical page mode...
2. Ctrl-m -> first link at the middle of the (visible part of the) page.
3. Ctrl-t -> first linke at the top of the (visible part of the) page.
4. Ctrl -> next link, Ctrl
Pages
1. Alt + b, back
2. Alt + f, forward
3. Alt + u, up (the google way)
4. Alt + p, favorite porn site.
Other?
Please don't "enhance" your web pages with this! It's a fine feature for those who want it in their browsers, and who can turn it off, but I do all these shortcuts with the "cumbersome" keyboard keys, and so would like my mouse function to remain the same.
(I do appreciate this for its hack value, though; good job!)
Would it be possible to add this functionality to IE using a user stylesheet (maybe with !important set on the body tag), and an action attached in an external .htc file?
I agree that it can be abused. We all know about ho x rated sites are popup nightmares. With mouse gestured in Jscript you could manipulate the users seemingly innocent keystrokes to open up more _unwanted_ stuff. - Annoying Also I had a look at the site an noticed how easy it must be to inadvertently shut down your browser with the given code - all you need is 2 key strokes accidentally and the window will close - Annoying. Sorry, I know I'm being negative. For those of us with good intentions, they ARE useful!
I love Graffiti. It's a quick and easy way to interface with a handheld without requiring a keyboard. This seems like an attempt to do something similar to the browsing experience.
Unfortunately it sounds like Graffiti is going away, mostly because people couldn't be bothered to learn it. Are mouse gestures intuitive enough to get people engaged that can't be bothered to learn Graffiti or set the clocks on their old VCRs?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I don't know about Mozilla, but in Opera at least (my preferred browser) the gestures can also mean clicks. For instance, to go back a page, you can hold the right button down while clicking the left. That may sound like a hassle but it actually becomes pretty much a strumming of the fingers, middle to index. There are other click combinations, and this alleviates the problem of moving the mouse at weird angles as some have pointed out.
How about it is included at the browser level, but the actions are scriptable?
i.e. [image src="title.gif" name="Slashdot" onMouseDownRight="Slashdot.src='title1.gif'"]
I think that would be great and really expand javascript functionality. Technically this could be done with the aforementioned code, but at the browser level itd be much better. Treating mouse gestures just like any other mouse event has a lot of potential
sheesh. mouse gestures. kids these days.
must... stay... awake...
I don't get the fascination with mouse gestures. Is it really that much more convenient than clicking a button or pressing a key? From the Mozilla gestures page:
p -Right. How did I ever live without these things?
View Source - Left-Down-Right-Down-Left (draw a squarish S)
Is right-clicking and choosing "view source" such a chore that you'd rather draw "S" shapes instead?
Reload (bypass cache) - Up-Down-Up
I dunno, pressing "F5" always seemed to work for me.
Personally I think the obsession with mouse gestures boils down to the typical geek fascination with things that, impractical and useless they may be, are just "exciting" for some reason.
Hey look, Slashdot implemented gestures.
Submit post - Left-Right-Up-Down-Down-Down-Up-Left-Down-Right-U
I posted it in a slashdot comment in 2001, but cannot find the posting right now. See Mustererkennung. I was inspired by black & white. Following a pattern should trigger a popup. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work in current browsers. ;-\
Links v2 handles pretty much all the stuff you want (text, graphics, SSL) and has minimal javascript support for those stupid sites that need it. Source code is under 4MB. It works on Linux framebuffer console too, as well as through svgalib and X11, or just plain old text mode.
In general I don't have much sympathy for RSI sufferers...
:)
I use a keyboard something like 8 hours a day, and have done for the last 15 years, programming computers. If anyone is a prime candidate, it's me, and no RSI as yet.
Perhaps you don't know what really causes RSI. Keyboarding doesn't, or we would have seen RSI cases decades ago, long before computers existed.
The biggest cause (well, so we think so far) is mouse usage. All that constant reaching for and manipulating the mouse. It can be mitigated with simple excersizes and not spending 8 straight hours on the damn thing. In fact, I've noticed mouse gestures HELP my wrist tendons, because they add some more variety to the act of mousing - it's not just move-click-move anymore. Well, it is, but more complex motions.
Congratulations on your not having RSI, but you're not a prime candidate as you suggest. At least not according to current theory, which will probably change sometime in the next 3 months
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
You're right that these "gestures" we're talking about do sound like exactly what the medical literature says causes RSI problems. Wrist-turning moves, over and over, are the basic cause of computer-related RSIs.
But your sample of one is a crock when it comes to dismissing everyone who has pain from this. Extremely useful "knowledge," that -- except all it does is arm you to dismiss other people and feel smug about not having been unlucky yourself. I used to work in bookstores in college, and some of the older clerks had RSI pain from shelving. Not something they were privileged to avoid in their jobs.
To think people are submitting articles to JAMA (003 Jun 11;289(22):2963-9 -- "Computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome: a 1-year follow-up study") trying to figure out whether carpal tunnel is associated with keyboards or mice or a combination. All we had to do was ask you and you could tell us it was a matter of being "reasonably careful." (Note -- those are quotes.)
Hey, guess what that study (and others) have indicated? It's mouse use, not the keyboard, that seems to be a main culprit. RSIs from computer use are almost always related to wrist movement. Trackballs (with a wrist rest especially) seem to be less problematic. Hmm, maybe we could use this information to prevent other people from undergoing a lot of pain, encourage trackballs instead... Oh, sorry, we don't have any sympathy for those people, 'cause they injure themselves out of a lack of common sense. No need to publish medical recommendations to guide businesses in their purchasing, for example. Morons. Let 'em "suffer."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
makes drag 'n click highlighting text [for copying] move forward and backwards....
If she floats, she's a witch.
Move along, nothing to see here...
I can't afford a sig!
First of all, I think mouse gestures are wanky and stupid. Gamers, maybe, find them easy because they're used to gesturing crap with their mice. Mine sits and lights up my table more than anything else.
:)
People constantly forget that in order to reach the largest audience possible for your site, you have to make it compatible with the largest audience out there. Far too many sites, attempting to be universally-accessible, have opted to include features that older browsers don't render correctly, can't disable, or generally make it impossible to navigate.
PEOPLE -- If I can't get to your site or can't read it properly using whatever I'm using, I won't be back.
My patience for tricked-out websites that require 99 different plugins to view is zero. My patience for websites that don't render nicely in Lynx or Links is higher, but still not absolute Side Note: I'd like to wring OSDN's neck for making FM and other sites damned near impossible to navigate in text because of their damned OSDN menus. My personal site is built in POH (Plain Old HTML) because it is most universal...I don't care who you are or what you run, you can see it.
First, JavaScript works on a Russian roulette basis...most of the time you'll get an empty chamber, sometimes it'll blow you up. The consistency in implementation leaves something to be desired, especially with more complicated scripts. Secondly, JS is a limiting technology -- if your browser doesn't do it or doesn't do it the way it was meant to do, it'll limit your audience.
If you're ok with the idea of having people not come to your site, fine. There's a lot of sites out there that wouldn't make sense to dumb them down too much (high media sites, etc. come to mind). But if you want a universal audience -- K.I.S.S. Even the trailers section of Apple's website renders nicely under Links, regardless of the fact that they don't have a text-only Quicktime plugin.
Blog,Twitter
Don't pick some of the more obtuse and complicated mouse gestures and then say "Hey, this sucks!" Of course you wouldn't like them if they were all like that!
I can't speak for Moz, as I haven't used it with gestures much, so this is Opera-related:
I'll tell you why mouse gestures rule. Page navigation. I tend to flip back and forth between pages a LOT, especially on sites like Slashdot. Click into a story, check out some comments, read a sub-comment, go back to the main story comments, go forward to see if I've read it correctly, go back, etc.
In Opera, going back and forth is a simple right-click and drag left or right, to go backwards and forwards in history respectively. MUCH nicer than constantly having to move mouse up the the back button, click. Move mouse down to comment link, click. Move mouse up to the back button, click.
Now, there may be keyboard shortcuts for back and forth than some people find handy, but for me, those 2 mouse gestures alone are like a scroll wheel. I'd never live without, and when forced to, it really, really sucks.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Just have the proxy rewrite your pages to insert the Javascript. I don't know if this would be easy to implement with currently existing proxies but it seems to me that as projects go, this one would be trivial for someone who knew something about the software in question. Which ain't me :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For crying out loud, he's done it in Javascript because he can, not necessarily because it's a good thing and not necessarily because it's practical but because he thought it would be fun to try.
Which oddly enough is the very same reason being used for those mad projects we often hear about (say wiring up your iPod to the Microwave).
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
...except without the little minion.
While I do like this concept. This would be really annoying if you were trying to do a cut and paste. You click and drag your mouse down to get a section of text and suddenly jump to the end of the document.
If they would make it right-click only it wouldn't be so aggravating.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
I know I'm not the only one who hilights text while I browse. For me, it's partly a nervous habit, and partly a way to keep track of where I am within a paragraph. With display resolution set to 1600x1200, one paragraph can become two lines, especially when small text is used. Hilighting helps me keep track of where I am within a long line, and which line is the next one. Mouse gestures would most certainly interfere with my browsing experience. Figures.
I think it's "The Universe will make a better idiot". But "someone" fits as well.
I've noticed a lot of complaining about text selection, click-and-drag, and interference with mouse gestures.
... no.
I've got a hint for you.
Use the right mouse button as the gesture indicator. When was the last time you selected text with the right mouse button?
Personally, I love these things. I don't have a fancy keyboard, so my mouse and keyboard aren't integrated. My options are moving the mouse to the 'back' button, gesturing, or moving my hand back to the keyboard.
The fastest solution for some things (forward/back in history, reload page, close window, new window) is a simple gesture. But Javascript? Come on. That's just sick. "Gesture up-left-right to see the boyscouts dance!"
I've already patented it.
Install "odometer" device and soon you will see without mouse gestures you're moving the mouse a few KILOMETERS a week! Gestures help you reduce this distance by some 70%.
Now put your mouse on a floor and push it two kilometers in one direction, as punishment for stupidity.
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And I dont' really like the mouse gestures in Moz/Firebird. I'm not sure if its because they are JavaScript.. they just don't feel right. In Opera they feel native and smooth. In Firebird they feel like an add on...an afterthought if you will.
Actually, current thinking disputes this. The reason RSI didn't affect typists (on mechanical typewriters) is due to the extra weight of the keys. The key return supplied enough movement that you wouldn't have to use any effort to lift your fingers the keys did it, whereas now you raise and lower the fingers in quick succession with a serious of poorly-coordinated muscle movements, causing pulling and straining. (This is also why most concert pianists find it impossible to play on a cheap Casio keyboard -- the poor return action means extra work leading to an inability to play fast.)
As an RSI sufferer (albeit mostly recovered) I find that I can't use a laptop keyboard for more than 15 minutes.
That said, I find the keyboard vastly preferential to the mouse. (I use the keyboard to navigate Windows menus -- there's a tip for the guy and his Maya gestures.) Also, one of the worst things I found was click-and-drag. The short travel buttons on a mouse need a not-inconsiderable amount of pressure to hold down....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
mouse gestures have me addicted to Opera. The only problems is that I find myself doing the "Close window" gesture in internet explorer, windows explorer, eudora...etc. I wish that mouse gestures were a core operating system feature, but how they interacted with a specific window would be controlled on a per-program (and thusly per-window) basis.
Basically, I like mouse gestures, and I think they should be used more globally instead of being localised a web browser or other specific application. The operating system should support passing gesture event information to the window in much the same way as it supplies information about a simple "click" event.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Note MozGest adds much more functionality besides "moving the mouse".
- Rockers: Hold one button, press other to perform action
- Wheel rockers: Hold a button and rotate wheel to perform action
- Custom gestures: You don't like some? Remove it! You'd prefer it done otherwise? Modify assignment. You have a new amazing idea? Write it, bookmarklet style in "custom gesture" field. Pissed off with LMB disturbing with selection? Switch to RMB!
Plus for those who protest against "flick of wrist" - I think moving your hand 2mm left to launch "back" is less stressing than moving it 5cm, to reach the "back" button.
Problem: Performance. With multiple heavy pages opening, on average hardware, it slows down seriously and sometimes gestures don't get recognised.
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The FA is /.ed, but I wanted to say thanks for the link to the plugin.
While I'm permanently addicted to Opera myself (and 7.2 is the best I've yet seen!), I can't use it in the computer labs at my college. Curiously, the lab computers don't block installs.
Therefore, the plugin is now zipped in one of my personal files, ready to be installed on any computer I sit down at. (I'm don't have the guts to install Opera on every computer. If I knew how run it directly from my drive without installing it in the registry, I would. Anyone know how to do that with XP Pro?)
~~~~~
Pet Peeve: Perscription drug advertising to the general public.
It's not a huge download, I don't see why they need to "protect" it. I think the real reason is they want e-mail address for sending "newsletters".
Interesting, that's something I haven't heard about before.
:)
But what about electric typewriters? Those date back at least 30 years. I guess then again, so do computer terminals. Did RSI go undiagnosed for a really long time, or what?
Personally (yes, the ever-reliable sample of one!) I've never had a day on the keyboard hurt, but boy: a day with a lot of mouse use really sucks.
Ah well, in another year it'll be "RSI caused by a chemical imbalance" anyway
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
my spelling sucks
I agree, it would be nice for OS support for mouse gestures.
"why netscape thought it a good idea to allow any site an almost arbitrary level of control over my browser is beyond me."
;)
It's 1994. The top of the line computers are 66Mhz. You want to market a server product that allows people to serve thousands of computers, without requiring super big iron support. You have a client program (Netscape Navigator) to go with your server product (Netscape webserver). Suddenly, it becomes clear to you -- distributed computing. Have the client side do some of the heavy lifting; it also allows other automation features on the client side not possible with HTML (at the time). You make this "Javascript" which is to other scripting languages as Java was to C and C++, and market it aggresively as a product solution.
Most people end up using it to have a trail of images after your mouse cursor, or the equivalent of xsnow
Only now are people even bothering to say, "maybe I don't want web pages being able to do absolutetly anything via a scriptable interface" However, there are still beneficial uses for Javascript (such as making web forms "smarter" about doing a first check before submitting it [since it costs more CPU/transfer time for the server to do it, this saves modem users the pain of a typo returning an error page], or seeding things with values), I don't think it should totally be stripped out. Just redesigned with security in mind, ala Java applets.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
How far would you have to move your mouse before it became more of a hinderance to your browsing than helpful? What if you had two monitors and you have to select something on the other monitor to reload a page in the first? Surely that would be annoying right? Well, that's how I feel about having to move my mouse all the way up there. It takes my attention away from what I'm doing (yes, I know the right click context menu works fine and is a viable alternative for me)
For me, I like being able to browse without having to worry about the buttons. I simply wave my hands and the page goes away or reloads or switches whatever. I don't want to have to physically focus in on the "back" or "reload" buttons. I just want the browser extend my desires as easily as possible with little distractions. To me, browsing without mouse gestures is like a button pressing user having a confirm box pop up saying "are you sure you want to go back?" every time you click back. It's a distraction that doesn't need to be there.
I hate the whole "you're too lazy to click back?" arguement. It has nothing to do with that and everything to do with efficiency and focus on what you're doing.
That takes my focus of what I want to do (reload the page to see what's changed... a non issue since I'd have to wait a non-negligible amount of time for the page to load, but apply this idea to other mouse gestures and it has significance).
HTML and all its extensions should focus on providing the document's contents and structure. The method of navigation is entirely up to the browser application, and should not be decided by the web designer.
Ego Masturbation Ploy
(your server MUST check input, forget about doing that in javascript).
No, the best uses I've seen help with the flow between form elements when you Tab/Shift-Tab, focus/blur, etc... bring up hidden layers when you click a checkbox, bring the focus to a field when you mouse over a region but haven't started typing.
I love those little nicities. Perfect use of the DOM and event handling in ecmascript.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
tried going to the demo page using a browser with mouse gestures enabled? If so, what happened?
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
reminds me of the graffiti features of palm pilots...
All I have to say is, I hope these gestures work better than they did in the sorriest modern game ever invented - Black & White. Don't get me wrong - the game was clever - but it is a prime example of how a bad user interface can ruin a game. The game was impossible to play due to mouse gestures being required to perform certain tasks. I have a feeling that the only people who like mouse gestures are the ones who still play this pathetic game...
I'm not sure if you're speaking from experience, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Pie menus are just mouse gestures with visual guides available. I frequently use pie menus as mouse gestures in mozilla without looking at the menu. In cases when I'm quick enough, within probably a few tenths of a second, the menu doesn't even need to display. Pie menus aren't slower for me, because most of the time that I use them they're equivalent to mouse gestures.
The key difference, when implemented well, is that pie menus give you some guidance when you decide to do something unusual that you haven't memorised.
[satire]
"In general, I don't have much sympathy for cancer sufferers."
[/satire]
You have me wrong sir.
I have zero, none, nada, zilch sympathy for cancer sufferers who cause their own cancer by smoking. It's simple. You smoke, you die early, and usually painfully. Tough - you knew about it before you started and you did it anyway. With any luck you didn't contribute to the gene pool. Good riddance, say I.
On the other hand, if you contract cancer through no fault of your own, my heart goes out to you and your loved ones. I sincerely hope it goes into remission, and you live a long, happy, and fulfilled life.
I am yet to be convinced that RSI is anything but a self-inflicted attitude-related and significantly psychosomatic symptom of someone not being sensible in how they treat themselves. I think it's come out of a litigous (sp?) US society, and I think it's a bandwagon on which people have jumped - in other words, it's a pile of.
As for "studies showing genetic issues with RSI" (another post), you can find "studies" to prove anything if you deliver a "research" budget. The bigger the bandwagon, the bigger the budget in an ever-increasing orgy of papers, hype, and litigation.
Oh, and if you disagree, then you are of course a baby-murderer, or perhaps you have no sympathy for those with terminal illnesses through no fault of their own.
Satirise to your hearts content, but the subject of good satire bears at least a passing resemblance to its focus, and last I noticed, RSI is not a fatal "disease".
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
" (your server MUST check input, forget about doing that in javascript)."
"(such as making web forms "smarter" about doing a first check before submitting it [since it costs more CPU/transfer time for the server to do it, this saves modem users the pain of a typo returning an error page],"
I did not say "Don't ever check on the server side." I said, "additional checking which allows users on slow links to not be punshed for typos that can be corrected by a little client-side scripting."
More checks are better than fewer.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Here's what I agree with: -Mouse gestures should not be too complicated. The "S" shaped ones and crazy circles etc are in fact unreliable (although I can accept that others may be able to do them accurately). I find that anything more complicated that two moves is a pain.
-There are perfectly good alternatives that involve keyboard use.
-anti Microsoft fanboys are tools.
Here's my rebuttal- You say there are more efficient means of browsing. I disagree (to an extent). If I'm browsing only with my keyboard, fine.. point taken. I do like to browse with keyboard as much as possible. When I use my mouse, chances are I don't have my free hand positioned over the keyboard, so it takes time to get it there and more importantly, focus and a concerted effort. With mouse gestures, I don't have to look for anything to click on or move my hand for the F5 key. My hand is already where it needs to be, I just flick the wrist. I think this is much more efficient browsing since you don't have to think about anything. The only thing that comes relatively close in my book is the right click popup in most browsers that let you go back. You can go back a page almost without looking at the menu.. you know to right click and move down just a hair and click.. bam! Back a page. But what about four pages back in history? Then you have to go the back button above. With mouse gestures, you don't have to think about it.
I know.. I'm going to get the "what your too lazy to move the mouse even to a right click popup!?!?" but that's not the point. The point is, I want to go back or forward without any thought. It should be an extension of what I'm thinking with very little effort.
Bottom line, I like my browser to be responsive to my browsing as much as possible... and to hold one mouse button and move a handful of pixels is about as responsive as I can image. I don't have to find the ctrl. key or the F5 key or anything.
Even more bottom line... I like my browsing to be able to be done without looking at anything navgation related (that's why I don't like pie menues). I should be able to be reading a post and think "nah, that's stupid..back" and I'm back... not "nah that's stupid.. ok, there's the back button.. and click.. back"
If you can't tell the difference between efficient and lazy. I don't understand the constant need to label mouse gestures as lazy. As if moving the mouse all over the screen prepares you for the Mr. Universe contest. My gestures let me back out of crappy posts like this so I can read informative ones quickly... so I can get to gym faster.
Sorry SharpFang
Warning: Self promotion ahead.
:(
I've written a free little program that allows you to design system wide or app specifice mouse gestures. Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 only.
See http://benjiyork.com/software/ for more info.
...into one HTML page? And using PgDn to get to the next page?
Catch:
1. "The Web Content Style Guide: An Essential Reference for Online Writers, Editors, and Managers" By Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, Catherine O'Dowd. Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-273-65605-8
Quote: "Write for the reader, not for your ego" (This is actually a title.)
Quote: "What makes a website great is what is below the surface, not what is above. Too many Web designers focus on the shiny stuff, the fancy graphics, the clever animations. Study after study shows that people are just not interested in this surface sheen. In fact, in many cases this visual-driven design gets in the way of people doing what they want to do."
Quote: "Computer users are accustomed to seeing certain conventions on the web that help them know where to look, what to click, and how things work. For example, navigation bars are typically at the top or side of a page, links are often blue and underlined, and items need to be placed in a shopping cart to be purchased. This kind of familiarity makes browsing and buying easier because people know what to expect from sites in general and aren't required to learn how a site works each time they visit a new one."
Quote: "People see the Web as a single huge place. What they learn through navigating around one website, they like to bring with them to another website. Take hypertext, for example. The original design for hypertext was blue for unclicked and purple for clicked. People like it because they're used to it. So when they see a blue link, they know that's a part of the website they haven't been to. When they see a purple link, they know that's a part of the website they have visited. Changing the color of the hyperlinks just confuses people. It's like having red and green traffic signals in one part of town, and orange and yellow in another."
Quote: "All this experimentation might have been fun for the designer, but it was hell for the reader. The reality is that the eye finds it easiest to read black text on a white background. Small quantities of text are okay with different designs, but if you want someone to read more than 300 words, give it to them black on white. The Web pioneers learned that lesson? today, the vast majority of websites use black (or dark) type on white (or light) background."
2. "Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites" By Andrew Chak. New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0-7357-1170-4.
Quote: "So, in come the usability consultants (myself included) who get paid to tell you what's wrong with your site and how to fix it. Make your links blue and underlined. Make your buttons clickable. Structure your site according to how your users think."
Quote: "The other major competitor to your site is the offline world (i.e., real life). If your site doesn't make something easier or more convenient than its offline equivalent, it probably isn't worth the disk space it occupies." (Note how, like the whole book, it focuses on providing convenience to the user, not idiotic flash animations.)
Quote: "If your links aren't blue or at the very least underlined, users might never bother to move their mouse to click on them. If your buttons don't have any depth or at least an outline, they might sit on your page unused. By designing your site and its elements according to users' expectations, you can increase the likelihood that your site will be used as you intended it to be."
Get the idea already? Your average visitors are _not_ looking for a funky psychedelic experience, with an interface that fundamentally differs from any other site. (E.g., having your very own gestures.) They want something boring, plain, and which works like any other site. It's that simple.
But somehow I highly suspect that all this won't get you out of your "who the fsck are you to tell me what you expect on my site?!!" mentality.
Well, guess what? That's exactly what I meant by feeding your ego to the customers. You're not making that site for the readers, you're making it just for yourself. A site which basicaly just says, "fuck you! _I_ am the important one here." Common clueless manager mistake.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Its a dumb idea!!
Yep, LINK REL="next","prev". Supported by Mozilla, with its "site navigation bar", together with buttons for "top", "up", "first", "last", and two separate menus for others. And WITH PRELOAD. (about the only situation when Mozilla preloads anything - a page with those tags. First "next" is preloaded, then "previous" (if not already in cache), then "up" and "top" (ditto).
Too bad so few webpages use it.
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It really should be an OS or background Application. Try StrokeIt for one day and you will never turn back. Expecially with dual monitors, where you can basicly "throw" windows from one screen to the other and max/min/close all or single windows with one stroke.
:-), N for new, Back/Forward commands, and alt-tab like window switching. It even supports userdefined actions with keystrokes: Switch to or open a program or file folder, cut/copy/paste, Set/unset always on top for ANY WINDOW (Very nice) and my favorite:
= [CTRL_DOWN]v[CTRL_UP][ENTER]
Other useful global features are C for close (Killing popups with one stroke of the hand
Highlight any text, draw an S on top of it and have a Google search pop up for that term!!!
search {
gesture = S
New browser = osd, OSD "Google" "2000" "50" "@Arial Unicode MS" "0" "255" "0" "1" "0"
copy = keys, keys [CTRL_DOWN]c[CTRL_UP]
Google = exec, web "about:blank"
activate = win, activate "IEFrame" "about:blank - Microsoft Internet Explorer" "" "1000"
goto google = keys, keys [ALT_DOWN]d[ALT_UP]http://www.google.com/search?q
}
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Perhaps someone did earlier imaginings and implementations of either, it is impossible to say with the current, broken, patent/IP "system".
In mouse-menu the user could use a loop or a cross to stimulate the menu popup. THe cross, like a cross of Ankh, or a rapid loop in any of eight directions N, NE, E, SE, S SW, W, NW executed a menu item. North was recommended to be reserved for "show menu"
It was not difficult to to distinguish such otherwise-not-usually-occurring mouse motions; the timing and error envelopes had designer settable, user tunable, stored in cookie levels for timing or error envelopes.
An eight-way menu degenerates cleanly into a four way menu by using only four items and starting out with a different error envelope specs.
Click-free(tm) was done at about the same time. Click-free detected hover over links and if the mouse was "still" for time t1, the image could be reversed or altered; after time, t2, the link would execute. Times t1 and t2 and the error envelope for determining "a still mouse" were designer specifiable and user modifiable, if the web designer wanted.
MouseMenu was done with a desire to widen web experiences and click-free was for those with difficulty clicking such as fibromyalgia or those with using alternative and awkward x-y pointers. Discussions were held with the NIH for funding & for a patent-into-public-domain but they did not go anywhere.
We may all pay dearly for mouse movement controls and hover-clicks in the near future if subsequently patented by SCO or the ilk.
I think this was 1998. Lawyer Donne (Dunne?) Esq. in Brattleboro VT handled some of the paper work with the NIH, pro-bono, according to recall.
Web research by Jay and others did not find any prior instances or discussions of similar efforts.
These were done just after multi-image changing rollovers were introduced (apparently) by Ronin. Multi-image rollovers were "adopted" within a few months at the IBM and BMW sites and then "taken" for use on the Netscape Developers site under "steal this script".
Jay Nickson
I suppose that not everyone had the Andreeson reality-distortion field affecting them :) Too bad no one else listened to you then. At least something's happening now.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Pie menus are inherently slower than mouse gestures, but they both have their uses.
Once webbrowsing started to get bigger, clients started to demand features of browsers that would allow them to be used as a replacement for end-user applications. Networks were much more heterogenous back then -- OS/2, Macintoshes, Unix machines, and Windows 3.1 all had their spot in the business world. Rather than supporting multiple applications, it was a lot easier to write one website and have it work in all the browsers.
Except that HTML at the time wasn't robust enough for most of what they needed to do to replace these applications. This improved with newer spec support, and also partially from the implementation of tags which were not strictly spec.. but still, it didn't totally address the automation that could be done in real computer client programs. That's where Javascript came in.
It wasn't about advertising. Heck, the first time I started seeing popup windows for that was like 1998/1999 -- years after Javascript was created. Although Portals were still really popular then (just as "push" was going through its death throes).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Javascript unit converters. Javascript spreadsheet applications. Basically, any thing that you can think of as a small, useful thing to have done, can be made into a webpage. The potential of web automation is pretty big. It's just that most people abused it for other things.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Without pie menus, you have to learn the gestures some other way, like reading manuals, or watching educational videos, which is why gestures are inherently harder to learn than pie menus.
Mousing ahead through pie menus is a gesture, so pie menus are not "inherently slower" than gestures. Pie menus teach you to use the gestures, while they're still useful before you have learned the gestures.
You're inherently wrong when you say that pie menus are inherently slower than mouse gestures. And you're ignoring the fact that mouse gestures are inherently harder to learn than pie menus.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Consider the concept of "gesture space": all possible gestures you can make with the mouse, between pressing and releasing the button, touching the screen with a pen and lifting the pen, or whatever.
The area of gesture space is infinite, but it can be divided up between valid gestures and invalid gestures. And you can compare the relative sizes of the gesture space areas that each gesture occupies. Some gestures are easier than others, because they occupy a large proportion of gesture space.
Typical gesture systems, like handwriting recognition, only cover a small percentage of gesture space. Most gestures are invalid. If you press down the button and wiggle around randomly, it's likely that will be an invalid gesture.
You also have to consider the distinction between different gestures. How different are they from each other? How well are they seperated from each other in gesture space?
Handwriting recognizers have a hard time discriminating between the lowercase letters "u" and "n", because they are close to each other in gesture space, and the demarcation between them is an arbitrary gray area. There is no solid line you can draw between what's a valid "n" and what's a valid "u".
On the other hand, pie menus totally saturate 100% of gesture space, dividing it up evenly and unambiguously between gestures. Any gesture is a well defined pie menu selection. This is because pie menus depend only on the direction between the endpoints of the gesture, not the actual path between the endpoints.
Pie menus give you the ability to reselect a different item and correct errors after you've started a pie menu selection. The fact that pie menus allow reselection is extremely important for their ease-of-use and trustability. It gives users much more confidence about using them, that they don't have about conventional gesture recognition. Pie menus are forgiving where gestures are not.
Each of the different pie menu gestures are optimally separated from each other. All gestures are distinct and don't have ambiguous overlapping gray regions between them like the difference between "n" and "u'.
Since the interpretation of a pie menu gesture is so well defined (not by the ouput of fuzzy logic or hidden markov models or neural nets, but by simple visually obvious geometry), it's easy for the user to understand and predict how the computer will interpret the gesture. But conventional gesture recognition systems are complex, unpredictable black boxes.
Users can't confidently use "mouse ahead" or gestures unless they can trust that the computer will interpret them properly. Pie menus can be trusted in a way that gestures can't. Even if invisible gestures were easy to learn like pie menus, they still wouldn't be easy to trust.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Advice to people implementing gesture recognition systems: "In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess."
-Don
The Zen of Python (by Tim Peters)
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Pie menus are inherently slower than mouse gestures because they use visible feedback, and users have to hit the right spot. With a gesture, you have more room for mistakes. Mouse gestures are not harder to learn than pie menus either. You have to learn what the symbol in the pie menu means. That's harder than just holding your right mouse button and dragging left to go back.
Both on the internet and on corporate LANs where they had to develop things like helpdesk software, etc.
It is useful, you just have to have a secured version for internet browsing, same as anything else.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You have never noticed? I guess that's why they call it SPYWARE. It wouldn't be spyware if it TOLD you what it was doing would it?
Possibly, but remember that in those days a computer took so long to do things that most of your computer time was spent waiting rather than typing! (My uncle was one of the first computer programmers in Scotland. He worked in a brewery on IBM 360s doing batch runs from punch cards. The official waiting room was always empty: the programmers' unofficial waiting room was... elsewhere in the brewery. Programmers spent roughly three quarters of the working day drinking....)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I use a Macintosh, and iCab is my browser of choice.
But do you actually *have* a right mouse button for the javascript to disable?
(I kid because I love).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling