On the Widespread Misuse of the Mouse 405
An anonymous reader writes "Recently launched blog "The New Interface Advocate," has an entry about how mice are being applied to situations they are intrinsically poorly suited for. It also has an interesting proposal for how to keep most of the current paradigm of GUIs and still take advantage of the other control devices, such as the keyboard."
I think we need the 'slashdotted' tag (Score:2, Informative)
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
CoralCache links (Score:4, Informative)
Article Text, part 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Programming.... (Score:5, Informative)
I deal with a lot of different vendor products used for call routing and IVR applications. One thing that's happened over the past 10 years is the move from text scripts to proprietary GUI based programming tools. I'm talking drag-n-drop blocks that perform specific functions which "hook" together by dragging lines between them.
Generally, this is to make configuring the systems more accessible to people not properly trained (or trained at ALL) in programming. ie. They're suppose to be good for writing error-free scripts. Unfortunately, these poor tools in no way reduce the number of bugs that find their way into the system.
Additionally, they also have the following draw-backs:
* Absolutely no error handling (try, catch, etc.)
* No way to program function calls....once you choose a path, there's no going back...this results in TONS of duplicate code.
* No way to know exactly what those blocks are doing under-the-hood.
* You're limited by the functionality of the blocks provided by the vendor.
* Many difficulties with source-control systems and build-and-release procedures.
* Don't even get me started on what it's like to debug with these stupid things....
Just this morning I was paged at 5:45am because someone made a change to a script. It took me an hour to find the problem because I had to zoom in and out, trying to get a feel of the layout, looking a block properties to see what's changed, etc. It turned out the lines connecting the day-of-the-week block were set correctly: they had the Monday line connected to Sunday's code.
Talk about a fubar'd system.
They should be outlawed.
Re:Not having read TFA yet.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
I stopped reading after the first paragraph. A tablet? Orders of magnitude more expensive? What? A good mouse costs at least 20€ (Logitec/Microsoft), and a tablet costs a whopping 80€ [wacom-shop.net]. A Voltio2 costs a whopping 40€ [wacom-shop.net]. Both are Wacoms, I'm sure you can get cheaper elsewhere (Trust [trust.nl]). Sure the Graphire Intuos3 A4, that I bought for my wife was 500€ back then (it still is), but not everyone needs that. Heck, my wife doesn't even need it!
Tablets have become very affordable, and if you like to use them, nothing stops you from buying one. Personally, I don't like them, but that my own inability to draw well that is at stake here ;-)
Re:The guy has a point and a 1/2 (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Using mouse hurts!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mouse Gestures (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Keyboard as an alternative (Score:3, Informative)
That's KDE... There is a config option to control anything :)
Open your control center, and take a look into window behaviour, I think it's there (I may be wrong, since I'm not on KDE now). It is also not the standard behaviour, you probably did set it by chosing "Unix behaviour" at the wisard that appears the first time you run it. Use the default "Windows behaviour" for a Windows like focus or fine set it (personaly, I dislike both).
Re:Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
That said, the hyperbole isn't that far from the truth. Let's look at the math, and since TFA was talking USian, and since Euros are worth like 30% more than U.S. Dollars, let's normalize the costs. For the sake of argument, let's use values from the manufacturer's online American-version store, rather than third-party distributors, and let's ignore shipping costs. Yes, the items in question are likely cheaper elsewhere.
The cheapest digital tablet direct from WACOM costs a hundred bucks [wacom.com] (99.95 U.S. Dollars). In contrast, the cheapest non-travel mouse from Logitec runs around fifteen bucks [logitech.com] (14.95 U.S. Dollars). A tablet is nearly 7 times more expensive than a mouse in U.S. dollars. Now, you're right, that's not exactly a full order of magnitude difference, but it is two thirds of an order of magnitude difference, and that's strong enough to support a slight exaggeration, regardless of the veracity of the claim that a tablet is a better input device than a mouse.