Reinventing the (Scroll) Wheel

Another scrolling utility worthy of mention is uControl, which gives the "scroll with mouse" ability to any ol' mouse or trackpad. Combined with SideTrack, it allows for PC-like customization of input devices.

<http://gnufoo.org/ucontrol/>

What I wouldn't give for a two button PowerBook though. Sidetrack is great, and I've gotten used to tap-for-click, click-for-right-click, but I'd rather have two buttons.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07925>

--Nik

--On Wednesday, December 15, 2004 5:02:27 AM CST -0800 Nik
<gerberinik.net> wrote:

> What I wouldn't give for a two button PowerBook though. Sidetrack is
> great, and I've gotten used to tap-for-click, click-for-right-click,
> but I'd rather have two buttons.

Oh not me, unless the second button was for another function. Having the
left-click right under my fingers at all times is awesome. Every laptop
I've tried with multiple buttons has been a disaster. One of the worst
designs is Toshiba's laptop with a something for everyone approach. They
have both the little eraser head in the keyboard, with 2 buttons (arranged
vertically) under the spacebar. Then under those two buttons they have a
trackpad (arranged horizontally), with two buttons underneath that. It's
nearly impossible to tell which buttons do what. All our Toshiba laptop
users have external mice now because of the poor design (and it appears
some people just don't get any type of pointer other than a mouse.)

Kensington seems to be the only company still making symmetrical
trackballs. Non-symmetrical devices are hard to switch back and forth
between hands. I taught myself to mouse right or left handed (and once with
a tablet, sideways where side to side movements were up and down on the
screen -- nobody ever used my computer in those days 8-) I find this is a
great way to reduce wrist pain. When one hand starts to move too much, I
flip to the other hand for awhile. It's also very nice if I need to key in
a lot of numbers. My hand is near the number pad without having to take a
hand off the mouse.

Kevin

Hi folks,

Apple's one button mouse philosophy is forever getting the stick. I always defend it, because it's the only kind of mouse that isn't biased against left-handers (like myself).

However, a scroll wheel is something Apple could add to the Mac mouse without its mice becoming handist.

But I think the real problem isn't that Apple don't put a scroll wheel on a mouse, but that the GUI concept is so impoverished. Today's GUIs are still built upon the concept of representing pieces of paper which can be manipulated with single screen pointer, equivalent to a paw. Since the only natural gestures you can do with that are point, click and drag, the one button scroll-less mouse is a natural fit.

Anything else, subverts the concept, the mouse becomes an abstract tool, rather than a paw. You can see this in current mouse designs which increasingly sprout buttons, balls, and sensors whose features have no concrete correlation with the GUI and must be learnt. Worse still, the utility of these features disguise the real problem - the flat GUI paradigm.

Apple on the other hand have emphasized their mouse-paw by making the entire mouse the button, leaving no room for other goodies. I think this is purposeful and not just stubborn.

-cheers from jules P.

On 16-Dec-04, at 7:58 AM, Julian Skidmore wrote:
> Apple's one button mouse philosophy is forever getting
> the stick. I always defend it, because it's the only
> kind of mouse that isn't biased against left-handers
> (like myself).

> Apple on the other hand have emphasized their
> mouse-paw by making the entire mouse the button,
> leaving no room for other goodies. I think this is
> purposeful and not just stubborn.

I am lefthanded and have no problem using a two-button mouse with a
basic scroll wheel.

The only explanation I've heard for Apple's one-button mouse is that
they thought two buttons would be confusing. Perhaps in the '70s but
today that seems laughable.

Spend $20 on a two-button mouse and try it for one month on your Mac.
You likely will discover handy contextual menus you did not know
existed. I've never heard of anyone going back to a one-button mouse.

[OK, no more on the one-button vs. multiple button mice issue - let's stick to talking about scrolling. -Adam]

robert mcgonegal

Speaking of scrolling, and mice... and XMas hardware:

The Logitech V500 looks like it has a different take on the scroll
wheel. It has a touchpad where the wheel is. To scroll up, we slide a
finger upwards on the touchpad, and then if we leave our finger on the
upper part of the touchpad, it continues to scroll upwards.

There are a couple other thoughtful features: sideways scroll,
expandable chassis, and transmitter stored within the mouse.

Looks like a tempting design for a notebook mouse. Couple of flaws
(IMHO): it uses 2 AAA batteries (I tend to have more AA batteries),
and there is no middle click functionality. The mouse is also new
enough that I haven't seen any reviews on the Mac.

I agree with David and prefer the approach MaxiMice takes at re-inventing the scroll wheel. It requires far less effort. You just move the cursor to the edge of a window to make it scroll. You don't have to continuously strike the trackpad or turn a mousewheel.

On the topic of scrolling I don't think I've ever seen a
solution for scrolling that really works. Even with a scroll wheel,
the movement is up/down. What would be good would be a way of turning
the entire mouse/ball into a scrolling device. Hold down some combo
and move the maouse/ball and the whole "page" moves, scrolling up,
down, left, right, diagonal, whatever.

What I would really like, I think, is a large virtual desktop, maybe
3x3 where you could zoom out to see the entire desktop, then zoom down
onto a portion of it to get a specific window, or "scroll" over the
entire workspace. Something that integrated with Exposé and gave you
a very large workspace even on a fairly small screen.

--
 ::::::=== <http://2blog.kreme.com> ===::::::

On 17-12-2004 16:17:27, Google Kreme wrote:
>What I would really like, I think, is a large virtual desktop, maybe
>3x3 where you could zoom out to see the entire desktop, then zoom down
>onto a portion of it to get a specific window, or "scroll" over the
>entire workspace. Something that integrated with Exposé and gave you
>a very large workspace even on a fairly small screen.

The experiences I've had with virtual desktops were universally awful. To me, a desktop
that's larger than the monitor is very disorienting. I spent way too much time hunting
down windows. A single window that's larger than the monitor is even worse.

Harro de Jong

On or about 12/17/04 7:17 AM, thus spake "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com>:

> On the topic of scrolling I don't think I've ever seen a
> solution for scrolling that really works. Even with a scroll wheel,
> the movement is up/down

Not entirely true. In most apps, holding Shift while turning the scroll
wheel scrolls left/right. And in Excel, holding Control while turning the
scroll wheel zooms in and out! m.

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OK, I know this is slightly off topic, but thought it interesting enough to
pass on. Intergraph has a new 3D mouse designed for digitizing stereo
images. It's operated with 2 hands and the 3D data point is entered via a
thumbwheel.

<http://imgs.intergraph.com/zimouse/>

Click on the arrows next to the image to rotate the picture and see all
sides of the mouse.

Kevin

I bought a "scroll tilt wheel mouse" recently for my mother, the scroll wheel
worked as you would expect, but if you tilt the wheel left or right, it scrolls
left or right. If you push the wheel down as if it were a button, it zooms in or
out!

<http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/DE/EN,CRID=2135,CONTENTID=
9340>

There is however one caveat! I set this up on my mum's PC, Looking at Logitech's
site just now, it looks as though this mouse doesn't work with macs.

I found the design intuitive and after a few hours of use, I had severe
withdrawal symtoms using the one button mouse on my Dad's eMac!

Francis

Lewis Butler: "On the topic of scrolling I don't think I've ever seen a
solution for scrolling that really works."

Perhaps something that works like the Quartz screen enlargement:
whichever way the mouse is moved (horizontal, vertical, or any
angle), the enlarged screen image (which is bigger than the screen)
moves in the _opposite_ direction by some fraction of that amount.
So mousing the cursor to the edge of the physical screen brings the
edge of the virtual screen to match.

To make this work for an application scrolling a document, it would
be necessary to add something like the command or shift key; while
such combinations are often used with a click or drag, they aren't
generally used with plain cursor movement, I think. Also, the ratio
of the movement of the document to the movement of the cursor would
have to be adjusted automatically based on the ratio of the visible
part of the document to the total document (with vertical and
horizontal ratios calculated separately).

At 7:17 on 17-12-04, Google Kreme wrote:
> What would be good would be a way of turning
> the entire mouse/ball into a scrolling device. Hold down some combo
> and move the maouse/ball and the whole "page" moves, scrolling up,
> down, left, right, diagonal, whatever.

Have a look at uControl. Amongst other things, it allows you to
define a(/multiple) key(s) that you hold down to turn the whole
trackpad into a scrolling device. For instance, I just hold down 'Fn'
on my PowerBook keyboard, and move my finger around the trackpad to
scroll the contents of the window (diagonally if I want). I find this
far superior to trying to find a small, invisible 'scroll' section at
the side of the trackpad to use (I tried this feature of SideTrack
for a while). I only have a laptop, so I don't know how this feature
works with normal mice.

<http://gnufoo.org/ucontrol>

Cheers,
Jolin

_________________
=> Jolin Warren, Edinburgh, Scotland