In the old days, geeks used to amuse themselves with arguments over how many buttons a mouse should have. I think we all know the argument: Doug Engelbart's original mouse had one button, therefore all mice forever and ever should have one. Or... the UX wizards at Apple decided one button was correct, therefore we should never have more than one. ever. Heck, even some early OS/2 and WinTel only had one or two buttons. (Yes, there was a era before all mice had three buttons w/ scroll wheels.)
My argument was always that mice should have zero buttons.
If you look at that thing next to your mouse... the thing with all the keys on it... yeah, the keyboard! those aren't enough buttons for you? In the late 80's / early 90's i put together a mockup of a system that used F2 - F5 as Select, Move, Resize and Delete. So instead of worrying about left- or right- clicks or alt- or control- clicks, you just used the mouse as a pointing device, then used the keyboard to specify the operation you wanted to perform on the thing under the mouse pointer.
Just for giggles, I setup a very basic prototype at http://info.meadhbh.org/mousetest.html . If you're hip to a new experience, just click on over and give it a try. To use it, move your mouse around on the screen, pressing various keys creates, moves, resizes and colorizes boxes:
- N - creates a New box
- M - toggles "Move Mode" - hit 'M' again to stop moving the box
- C - cycles through a few colors
- R - toggles "Resize Mode" - hit 'R' again to stop resizing the box
Cheers!
Sorry, but I hate it. I use either the keyboard, or the mouse, but rarely both at the same time. I find that switching back and forth between the two is distracting. Perhaps if I ever learned to type at 75 wpm on a single handed keyboard, I'd be good with the idea. Then I could learn to type and mouse at the same time, sort of like rubbing your belly whilst patting your head.
ReplyDeleteThis is how I wish most CAD software would work. Use the mouse to indicate, and the keyboard to act. Contrary to Keith above, I love it. One minor change I'd suggest is to add an indication of what's "active" under the mouse.
ReplyDeleteI'd guess works best with a real mouse, not a trackpad, since trackpads are right in front of the keyboard. I haven't actually tried it though.