If right clicking is useful, why would you want to wean yourself from it? I am of course assuming that you are doing it because it is useful (if not then why).
I don't think I understand your response. Someone found a better (for them) way and doesn't want to revert. They introduced this to another person who had the same response. They are both happier with their new option on their own computer. Why is this bad?
As for the "must learn to rely on right clicking", please tell me, what program (besides the Gimp), in Linux, BSD, Next, Windows, BeOS, Plan9, QNX..... REQUIRES it. None of those OS's require use of the right button, they all do SUPPORT it, so do Macs. Most operating systems will even allow you to use them without a keyboard by default.
Just putting any Apple related story on Slashdot is guaranteed to turn into a one-button vs many button flamefest guaranteed to get tons of comments. If anyone mentions anything slightly bad about anything apple they get acused of being a troll and get their life threatened. If anyone says anything good about them, they get accused of being a Jobs can-do-no-wrong zombie.
Either way, comments will come like a flood. If your ads are paid based on views, its a good money maker.
If right clicking to get a context menu is a kludge then why is clicking and holding to get a context menu not a kludge? Or holding the control key and clicking? Apple is still proving the "kludge" they're just giving a different way to do it. Other than the Gimp, I can't think of any programs that rely on the context menu. Now, I agree that depending on the context menu is poor design. But, who does it (besides the Gimp)?
Windows mouse lesson. Here's how a mouse works. Push this button to do this. Push the other one to do other stuff. That's like what, 20 seconds. Mac mouse lessons, click to do stuff. Click and wait a couple of seconds to do other stuff, or hold a button on the keyboard and click to do some other stuff. Linux mouse lessons Click to do some stuff, rick click to do other stuff. Select some text (its copied auto-magically), middle click to paste.
People need *training* for that? I hope you're joking. How is click and hold or hold keyboard button and click more intuitive than a right click? I'll counter myself and say that someone who can't figure out how to use a mouse in more than a couple of seconds probably SHOULD get a mac. Because that same person will never be able to keep they're computer spyware and virus free. They'll probably end up with a zombie PC causing problems for the rest of us. At least they'll have reduced exposure to those risks. Hmmm.... considering the number of windows users with spyware/virii/worms, maybe many more people should convert.
I guess my 80 year old 5 button mouse (with scroll wheel) weilding grandmother, my 100 year great-grandmother, and my three year old son are freakin geniuses compared to the average Mac user.
Maybe I need to find some *average* people to hang out with to see why this is such a big deal.
So, you are saying, that Apple is making the users (majority) suffer in-order to force the programmers (minority) to do things differently. Except there is a flaw, programmers still design apps to use the contextual menu. How you get just changes.
Their website suggests that the one-button thing is about selling a prettier mouse.
Like, whats with people and their 102 button keyboards? There's only what, 26 letters in the alphabet. The rest is just silly. And those media keyboards, what are people thinking, having a button to start the web browser and another one for the media player. They must be to damn lazy to navigate to where the app is installed and double click the executable. Or those mouse wheels? Whats wrong with clicking on up/down arrows. Why can't everybody be the same and like the same thing? That would really save money for the guys making hardware. They would only have one model to refine production of. All these choices are going to confuse and empower people. These choices might actually stimulate capitalism as people try to exploit the differences in people and make money. We have to stop this. I say everybody gets a grey one-button mouse, anyone who doesn't like gets up against the wall.
Its always apeared that its the apple apologists, not Apple, who make the excuse that grandma can use one button more easily. I think the real reason is design and style. Apple has focused more on how the computer looks than on how easy it is to use.
Apple's site says "Single buttons looks, multi-button charm". This suggests that the one button thing has more to do with *looks* and design, than functionality. There was the recent no-button mouse by Apple; pretty but a pain to use. There was the infamous iMac gimee-carpal-tunnel-hockey-puck that stylisticaly was a good match for the iMac but, this was definitely not designed for human hands (chimpanzes maybe?). The statement from the site, "for the best of both form and function", suggests this is true (single button=pretty, multi-button=functional).
From the site, "Stick with single-button simplicity or click with multibutton efficiency." *suggests* that they've known all along that the single button is less efficient.
Clicking the "Design" link takes us to a page with the statement "Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do", again suggesting that the primary driving force for the mouse has been form over function.
Then I ask myself, why I am contributing to any forum about the mac mouse, that will always sink to flaming hell.
Rather than invite flames (as your other replies) with a useless comment, why not tell why this is so? How about explaining your statement. Give a small example. Saying RoR is sweet doesn't help the Ruby community or the Slashdot community. I could say using modperl or IIS/ASP is sweet for AJAX but, it would serve no purpose. Why not add a comment that informs and helps the reader? Why not respond to this post saying how Ruby on Rails and AJAX can work together? That might provoke interesting and informative discussion rather than fanning the flames. Everyone would benefit.
Sure the *web* was originally designed around the idea of hyperlinking documents. But, whats wrong with building rich applications for the browser? Is this somehow more evil than hard to maintain, bloated, crappy VisualBasic/Swing/Delphi/Powerbuilder applications that will be very platform specific? A mess of code will happen in any language on any platform. Its up to the developer to prevent it.
The browser is just a tool. Why not exploit that its much easier to build/test an app for a handful of browsers than it is for many operating systems. The security side doesn't need much explanation, browsers though insecure are still better than installing random executables. Should a user have to download and install a program just to get a rich ecommerce experience?
XAML and XUL are just another (albeit, better) way to do this. Apps to use it (Moz) just aren't ubiquitous (yet). However, generally, XUL apps are just as Javascript heavy as a DHTML app. Alot of the ideas behind these DHTML apps are the same as you propose for XUL, "Do as much as you can on the client, communicate only what you need to the server, don't re-render everything every time the user needs to change something, concentrate rendering on the client as well."
The big downer will be when people decide that sites/apps should only be usable by browsers with these capabilities. Then again, thats been happening for awhile.
I glad you mentioned whiteboard and digital camera. This has to be one of the fastest methods around for quick and dirty diagrams. I can't count the times I see someone spending days with a graphic util just to produce a throw away diagram. When you think that a professional developer probably costs a company $150/hr (wages/benefits/taxes/overhead) those can be some pretty damned expensive diagrams. As compared to spending 5-10 mins on a whiteboard, take a picture, and drop in whatever document, total time 15-20 minutes including trip for more coffee.
I'm sure they'll flame me to hell but, my comment is really directed toward developers, not graphic artists. Someone who spends a large amount of time with these tools will obviously do the job faster.
It seems to me that the Linux community doesn't have a creative bone in its collective body when it comes to GUI design
Interesting. It seems to me that the "Linux community" that produces applications are programmers, who will probably treat GUI design as secondary. It also seems to me that the "creative community" is not really interested in *sharing* their work the way programmers do. Maybe if a few graphic artists and GUI folks were less self centered they would contribute to some of these projects. In the commercial world, they are paid to.
My understanding is that the objective is to move a file from one folder to another, not to drag and drop. That is a means to do it. Cut and paste is another. Why drag to a printer (I've never even heard of this one) when I can hit ctl-p? Lets not get so obsessed with drag and drop that we lose sight of why its there, the objective. Besides, its just a metaphor, you're really dragging anything. Really new users find drag an drop about as intuitive (or less) as mv dir1/file1.txt dir2
Which to use depends on the person using the computer. Options are good.
Personally, I'll take keyboard use, its an order of magnitude faster, *for me*. I can do a keyboard shortcut in less time than it takes to remove my hands from thekeyboard to grab the mouse, let alone move and manipulate the mouse. If I'm just lounging out, keyboard out of reach, surfing the web, then I'll use the mouse because its more convienent.
Don't forget we've had buckyballs and carbon nanotubes around us for a long time. They exist in soot. You make them everytime you burn something. You probably made some burning popcorn in the microwave. Although the quantities are small in plain old soot, these molecules are there.
As for self-replicating nanomachines. We first need self-replicating machines (beyond the putting some blocks together prev mentioned in slashdot), nano-machines, and AI suffcient that the machines can find their own material for assembly. I'd bet we are still quite a way off from that.
you have no civil rights, nobody does your government has absolute power over you women have no rights your government will decide your religion protesters are generally killed you will have to kill the animals you eat if you caim to be a vegetarian, you'll probably be burned as a witch you have a very samll chance of making it past 5 you'll probably die before reaching age 30 you'll probably die from a common disease there is no toilet paper you poop in a pot you have to clean that pot you probably have lice have you ever tried sleeping on a bed of straw? your roof will leak rain you probably work the fields from the moment you awake till the moment you go to sleep bathing is not a regular activity
For the coal burners, lets not forget the London Fog of 1952 where about 4000 people died.
I'd bet most of them are unemployed (too much time on their hands). That gives you 1 out of 3. They are probably unlikely to be impoverished, thats how they afford to be unemployed. Does poor education equate to uneducated, hmmm, prob not.
A slashdotter who did not build his own computer is like a jedi who did not build his own lightsaber.
Building a computer without a soldering iron is like assembling legos.
From TFA, the "nano tech" they are using reduces the amount of toxic chemicals required to make the pants stain resistent. Hmmm, fewer toxic chemicals seems like a pretty good thing.
Unrelated to your post, one of the the big problems with nanotechnology is misuse of the term. In the late 1800's we didn't call molecular engineering nanotech, we called it molecular engineering. Nylon, is a nanotechnology, people seem ok wtih nylon. You are surronded by nano-particles (dust, pollen, etc...), we have been since we've existed.
All of these knee-jerk reactions are based on science fiction. The idea of nano-machines. Now that is something completely different. And, they don't yet exist, although research into making components for them does.
You're right. I just get sick of hearing people call crappy software crappy. As if they expected anything else.
Then I see Google, they don't even anounce new stuff, they just put it out and everybody raves about how great they are. Anything "missing" gets touted as "great potential" instead of a product's lacking.
Maybe Microsoft would be better by not announcing this before its released. Then execute a "silent" release (ala Google style) as beta. There are enough MS zealots that would download, try and report bugs and problems. Then when they reach an acceptably low level of bugs they can make a public announcement with all the fanfare. By making an announcement before the product is available, they take a bigger risk when the product doesn't live up to the hype.
Seems it (considering the purpose described) that they could have just bought a google search appliance. But, then there is the govt appropriations technique....
Slashdot Mirror
If right clicking is useful, why would you want to wean yourself from it?
I am of course assuming that you are doing it because it is useful (if not then why).
I don't think I understand your response. Someone found a better (for them) way and doesn't want to revert. They introduced this to another person who had the same response. They are both happier with their new option on their own computer. Why is this bad?
As for the "must learn to rely on right clicking", please tell me, what program (besides the Gimp), in Linux, BSD, Next, Windows, BeOS, Plan9, QNX..... REQUIRES it. None of those OS's require use of the right button, they all do SUPPORT it, so do Macs. Most operating systems will even allow you to use them without a keyboard by default.
Just putting any Apple related story on Slashdot is guaranteed to turn into a one-button vs many button flamefest guaranteed to get tons of comments.
If anyone mentions anything slightly bad about anything apple they get acused of being a troll and get their life threatened.
If anyone says anything good about them, they get accused of being a Jobs can-do-no-wrong zombie.
Either way, comments will come like a flood. If your ads are paid based on views, its a good money maker.
If right clicking to get a context menu is a kludge then why is clicking and holding to get a context menu not a kludge?
Or holding the control key and clicking?
Apple is still proving the "kludge" they're just giving a different way to do it.
Other than the Gimp, I can't think of any programs that rely on the context menu. Now, I agree that depending on the context menu is poor design. But, who does it (besides the Gimp)?
Windows mouse lesson. Here's how a mouse works.
Push this button to do this. Push the other one to do other stuff.
That's like what, 20 seconds.
Mac mouse lessons, click to do stuff. Click and wait a couple of seconds to do other stuff, or hold a button on the keyboard and click to do some other stuff.
Linux mouse lessons
Click to do some stuff, rick click to do other stuff. Select some text (its copied auto-magically), middle click to paste.
People need *training* for that? I hope you're joking. How is click and hold or hold keyboard button and click more intuitive than a right click?
I'll counter myself and say that someone who can't figure out how to use a mouse in more than a couple of seconds probably SHOULD get a mac. Because that same person will never be able to keep they're computer spyware and virus free. They'll probably end up with a zombie PC causing problems for the rest of us. At least they'll have reduced exposure to those risks.
Hmmm.... considering the number of windows users with spyware/virii/worms, maybe many more people should convert.
I guess my 80 year old 5 button mouse (with scroll wheel) weilding grandmother, my 100 year great-grandmother, and my three year old son are freakin geniuses compared to the average Mac user. Maybe I need to find some *average* people to hang out with to see why this is such a big deal.
"The advantages of the single-button mosuse for the experienced user should be that it is faster"
Hmmm...
Faster = click and wait
Faster = control-key click
Slow = right click
How could I argue with that.
So, you are saying, that Apple is making the users (majority) suffer in-order to force the programmers (minority) to do things differently.
Except there is a flaw, programmers still design apps to use the contextual menu. How you get just changes.
Their website suggests that the one-button thing is about selling a prettier mouse.
Here are some quotes from Apple (from TFA) to exemplify it:
... best of both form and function"
"Single button looks, multi button charm"
"Mighty Mouse combines the capability of a multibutton
"Stick with single-button simplicity or click with multibutton efficiency"
"Alas the fate of the one-button mouse in today's multibutton world. Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do"
It looks like Apple's decision has always been form over function.
some examples of mice not meant for human hands:
no-button mouse
iMac hockey puck
Like, whats with people and their 102 button keyboards? There's only what, 26 letters in the alphabet. The rest is just silly. And those media keyboards, what are people thinking, having a button to start the web browser and another one for the media player. They must be to damn lazy to navigate to where the app is installed and double click the executable.
Or those mouse wheels? Whats wrong with clicking on up/down arrows.
Why can't everybody be the same and like the same thing? That would really save money for the guys making hardware. They would only have one model to refine production of. All these choices are going to confuse and empower people. These choices might actually stimulate capitalism as people try to exploit the differences in people and make money. We have to stop this.
I say everybody gets a grey one-button mouse, anyone who doesn't like gets up against the wall.
Its always apeared that its the apple apologists, not Apple, who make the excuse that grandma can use one button more easily.
I think the real reason is design and style. Apple has focused more on how the computer looks than on how easy it is to use.
Apple's site says "Single buttons looks, multi-button charm". This suggests that the one button thing has more to do with *looks* and design, than functionality. There was the recent no-button mouse by Apple; pretty but a pain to use. There was the infamous iMac gimee-carpal-tunnel-hockey-puck that stylisticaly was a good match for the iMac but, this was definitely not designed for human hands (chimpanzes maybe?).
The statement from the site, "for the best of both form and function", suggests this is true (single button=pretty, multi-button=functional).
From the site, "Stick with single-button simplicity or click with multibutton efficiency." *suggests* that they've known all along that the single button is less efficient.
Clicking the "Design" link takes us to a page with the statement "Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do", again suggesting that the primary driving force for the mouse has been form over function.
Then I ask myself, why I am contributing to any forum about the mac mouse, that will always sink to flaming hell.
Rather than invite flames (as your other replies) with a useless comment, why not tell why this is so?
How about explaining your statement.
Give a small example.
Saying RoR is sweet doesn't help the Ruby community or the Slashdot community. I could say using modperl or IIS/ASP is sweet for AJAX but, it would serve no purpose.
Why not add a comment that informs and helps the reader?
Why not respond to this post saying how Ruby on Rails and AJAX can work together? That might provoke interesting and informative discussion rather than fanning the flames. Everyone would benefit.
Sure the *web* was originally designed around the idea of hyperlinking documents.
But, whats wrong with building rich applications for the browser? Is this somehow more evil than hard to maintain, bloated, crappy VisualBasic/Swing/Delphi/Powerbuilder applications that will be very platform specific?
A mess of code will happen in any language on any platform. Its up to the developer to prevent it.
The browser is just a tool. Why not exploit that its much easier to build/test an app for a handful of browsers than it is for many operating systems.
The security side doesn't need much explanation, browsers though insecure are still better than installing random executables.
Should a user have to download and install a program just to get a rich ecommerce experience?
XAML and XUL are just another (albeit, better) way to do this. Apps to use it (Moz) just aren't ubiquitous (yet). However, generally, XUL apps are just as Javascript heavy as a DHTML app. Alot of the ideas behind these DHTML apps are the same as you propose for XUL, "Do as much as you can on the client, communicate only what you need to the server, don't re-render everything every time the user needs to change something, concentrate rendering on the client as well."
The big downer will be when people decide that sites/apps should only be usable by browsers with these capabilities. Then again, thats been happening for awhile.
I glad you mentioned whiteboard and digital camera.
This has to be one of the fastest methods around for quick and dirty diagrams.
I can't count the times I see someone spending days with a graphic util just to produce a throw away diagram. When you think that a professional developer probably costs a company $150/hr (wages/benefits/taxes/overhead) those can be some pretty damned expensive diagrams.
As compared to spending 5-10 mins on a whiteboard, take a picture, and drop in whatever document, total time 15-20 minutes including trip for more coffee.
I'm sure they'll flame me to hell but, my comment is really directed toward developers, not graphic artists. Someone who spends a large amount of time with these tools will obviously do the job faster.
It seems to me that the Linux community doesn't have a creative bone in its collective body when it comes to GUI design
Interesting. It seems to me that the "Linux community" that produces applications are programmers, who will probably treat GUI design as secondary. It also seems to me that the "creative community" is not really interested in *sharing* their work the way programmers do. Maybe if a few graphic artists and GUI folks were less self centered they would contribute to some of these projects. In the commercial world, they are paid to.
My understanding is that the objective is to move a file from one folder to another, not to drag and drop. That is a means to do it. Cut and paste is another. Why drag to a printer (I've never even heard of this one) when I can hit ctl-p? Lets not get so obsessed with drag and drop that we lose sight of why its there, the objective. Besides, its just a metaphor, you're really dragging anything.
Really new users find drag an drop about as intuitive (or less) as mv dir1/file1.txt dir2
Which to use depends on the person using the computer. Options are good.
Personally, I'll take keyboard use, its an order of magnitude faster, *for me*. I can do a keyboard shortcut in less time than it takes to remove my hands from thekeyboard to grab the mouse, let alone move and manipulate the mouse. If I'm just lounging out, keyboard out of reach, surfing the web, then I'll use the mouse because its more convienent.
Don't forget we've had buckyballs and carbon nanotubes around us for a long time. They exist in soot. You make them everytime you burn something.
You probably made some burning popcorn in the microwave. Although the quantities are small in plain old soot, these molecules are there.
As for self-replicating nanomachines. We first need self-replicating machines (beyond the putting some blocks together prev mentioned in slashdot), nano-machines, and AI suffcient that the machines can find their own material for assembly. I'd bet we are still quite a way off from that.
Lets not forget in the dark ages
you have no civil rights, nobody does
your government has absolute power over you
women have no rights
your government will decide your religion
protesters are generally killed
you will have to kill the animals you eat
if you caim to be a vegetarian, you'll probably be burned as a witch
you have a very samll chance of making it past 5
you'll probably die before reaching age 30
you'll probably die from a common disease
there is no toilet paper
you poop in a pot
you have to clean that pot
you probably have lice
have you ever tried sleeping on a bed of straw?
your roof will leak rain
you probably work the fields from the moment you awake till the moment you go to sleep
bathing is not a regular activity
For the coal burners, lets not forget the London Fog of 1952 where about 4000 people died.
I'd bet most of them are unemployed (too much time on their hands). That gives you 1 out of 3.
They are probably unlikely to be impoverished, thats how they afford to be unemployed.
Does poor education equate to uneducated, hmmm, prob not.
Why is it always the poor rich kids who do this?
A slashdotter who did not build his own computer is like a jedi who did not build his own lightsaber.
Building a computer without a soldering iron is like assembling legos.
From TFA, the "nano tech" they are using reduces the amount of toxic chemicals required to make the pants stain resistent. Hmmm, fewer toxic chemicals seems like a pretty good thing.
Unrelated to your post, one of the the big problems with nanotechnology is misuse of the term. In the late 1800's we didn't call molecular engineering nanotech, we called it molecular engineering. Nylon, is a nanotechnology, people seem ok wtih nylon. You are surronded by nano-particles (dust, pollen, etc...), we have been since we've existed.
All of these knee-jerk reactions are based on science fiction. The idea of nano-machines. Now that is something completely different. And, they don't yet exist, although research into making components for them does.
You're right. I just get sick of hearing people call crappy software crappy. As if they expected anything else.
Then I see Google, they don't even anounce new stuff, they just put it out and everybody raves about how great they are. Anything "missing" gets touted as "great potential" instead of a product's lacking.
kill anybody. He might get 20 years for that.
I think it will probably be MSIDN
Maybe Microsoft would be better by not announcing this before its released.
Then execute a "silent" release (ala Google style) as beta. There are enough MS zealots that would download, try and report bugs and problems. Then when they reach an acceptably low level of bugs they can make a public announcement with all the fanfare.
By making an announcement before the product is available, they take a bigger risk when the product doesn't live up to the hype.
just my $0.02
Seems it (considering the purpose described) that they could have just bought a google search appliance.
But, then there is the govt appropriations technique....