Xref: utzoo comp.misc:7700 comp.cog-eng:1483 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!news From: flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.cog-eng Subject: Multi-button mice (Re: Xerox sues Apple!) Message-ID: <1989Dec18.081450.28019@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> Date: 18 Dec 89 08:14:50 GMT References: <172@comcon.UUCP> <7326@ficc.uu.net> <9320@hoptoad.uucp> Sender: news@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State University Computer Science Lines: 31 Tim Maroney wrote: > I have *never* seen a non-techno-jock user who could keep the mouse > buttons straight. Multi-button mice are brain-damaged. The problem with multi-button mice is confusion of buttons. My prime example is the game "xmille". You click the left button on a card to discard it, the right button to play it. Or is it the other way around? Each button is used about equally often. You sometimes have to discard cards for a long time, so when you finally get a card you can play, you naturally discard it. An IBM PC version of mille that uses the right and left arrows is about as bad. Poor design. A partial fix is to use visual cues. Label the buttons on the screen somewhere, like labelling function keys. But then, many users don't read and/or understand what the computer tells them. ("What does 'missing semicolon' mean?" "It means you're missing a semicolon." "Oh.") This is the success of iconic systems. The problem may be just lack of consistency; every application seems to want to use the mouse buttons in a different way. If, say, the right button always moved windows around, there may be less confusion. Maybe if the buttons operate in different contexts, say, the left button belongs to the application, and the right button belongs to the window manager. Probably not; "window manager" is a fuzzy concept. One thing that might be interesting is a mouse with a thumb button. This naturally maps to grabbing and moving things around. Much like the index finger maps naturally to pointing. -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu *!psuvax1!flee