Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!leah!itsgw!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Mouse buttons Summary: Overview of SunView Keywords: sunview suntools Message-ID: <4751@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 5 Jul 88 12:27:38 GMT References: <4688@killer.UUCP> Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 142 In article <4688@killer.UUCP> chari@killer.UUCP (Chris Whatley) writes: | |When mousing, do most prefer a three button, two button or one button mouse? |I have never used anything but the single button version (a la Mac II). What |are the other two or one buttons used for usually. I understand that on Suns |sometimes one scrolls down while the other scrolls up or, one draws while |another pops up a menu. | |This all seems like an uneccessary complication to the interface. Of course, I |may be biased toward what I use every day. | At least you are honest. :-) I will try to generalize the rules used in the Sun interface. The right mouse button is generally a pop-up menu. What the menu displays depends on what you are doing and where the mouse is. There are several options with the styles of menus. The default is that the choices are shown, and when you move the mouse into one of the choices, the selection is highlighted. If you release the mouse button, the selection is made. If you move the mouse button away, the selection is not made. In some cases, indicated by an arrow, the mouse can be moved right to expose a sub-menu. This in turn may have more sub-menus. On the desktop, the right button creates new applications/exits/redraws On the edge of an application, it can move/open/close/kill/hide/expose/resize the window. Inside a window, it is application specific. The menu pops up under the mouse. It's like the title bar on a Mac, but you don't have to move the mouse. The left mouse button is used for selecting/pointing at items. Pushing buttons, changing the insertion point of text, etc. In the case of a multi-valued button, the right mouse button shows all selections at once. The left mouse would cycle thru the choices. It is easy to use this scheme, because the left button is used to select an item. The right button is used when you want to see what the options are. I tell people, "When in doubt, hold down the right mouse button." The middle mouse is used to modify a selection. Typically it is used to extend a text selection before cutting/pasting. On the Sun keyboard, there are several keys that can be held down while another key or mouse button is pressed. These include Shift, Control, Left, and Right. The Left and Right are typically used as a Meta-key. You can therefore hold down shift, control, left and click a mouse button. Certain applications make use of the large number of bindings available to the user. --------------------------------------------------------------------- But how well does it work? In practice, the large number of combinations offers several advantages: 1) A large number of accelerators can be added 2) Meta-key combinations can have symmetric functionality. To clarify, while you can open/close/move/resize/hide/expose windows with the right mouse button, this can be tedious. There are accelerators to do all of these operations without the pop-up menus. Here are some examples for modifying application windows: Left mouse Button accelerators ============================== On an iconic/closed application/window - open it On an Open window, bring it to the top of the stack Shift reverses directions, so Shift & left mouse will put the window underneath the rest. Control modifies function, so Control-Left makes the window Zoom to the full size of the window. Middle Mouse Button accelerators ================================ Moves a window Control changes function, so Control-Middle resizes the window. Remember that these accelerators aren't needed. So new users don't have to remember them, but advanced users use them all the time. Also, these operations don't require any special part of the application to be visible. You don't need to see a grow-box to resize a window. As long as any edge is visible, you can perform the above operations. You can also close/move/resize windows that are underneath other windows. People claim that two/three button mice are too complicated. I don't believe SunView falls into that category. It follows the law of least astonishment. It doesn't surprise you. I suppose in simple terms to a Mac user, the right mouse button is a 'portable title bar' and the left button performs the function of the single Mac button. (More or less). With respect to the scroll bars, there are two different areas: the page buttons and the bubble. There are two page buttons. One at the top, and one at the bottom. They are identical. You just move the mouse to the closest one, or the one that is visible (because the other could be covered up by another window). In the page button, the mouse buttons have the following function: Left - down one line Right - up one line Middle - down one page SHift-Middle - Up one page (Shift == reverse direction) You can hold down the buttons to repeat the scroll. In the bubble area, you see a small bubble inside a larger one. The small bubble shows where you are and the size of the viewing area (W.R.T. the entire area). The middle button can be used to move the bubble to the indicated spot. The left and right mouse buttons can be used to move the line at the mouse to the top/bottom of the viewing area. To answer your question, people prefer what they are familiar with. A flexible window system will let you modify the bindings to a combination that makes sense to you. A flexible workstation is one that gives you hardware that can provide a large number of combinations. In my opinion, having a large number of combinations can reduce the complexity of a user interface and increase the efficientcy of an experienced user. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!steinmetz!barnett