Talk:Computer mouse

"Later mice used optical or inertial mechanisms to detect movement."

Optical mice I have seen. What mice used inertia mechanisms to detect movement? It seems far too difficult to make an inertial mechanism smooth and precise enough. --drj

Swedish inventor HÃ¥kan Lans is also mentioned as "inventor" of the mouse in some contexts, maybe this should be mentioned?

Could well be another case of an American reinventing something, commercialising it, and getting the recognition because of it. If you've got some details on this, by all means add them. Be bold in updating pages! --Robert Merkel

Believe me, it's not. Engelbart never commercialized the mouse, and essentially has made zero money off of it. He's barely gotten any recognition for his accomplishments, of which the mouse is only an indicative part.--TheCunctator

What HÃ¥kan Lans did was to invent the first mass produced pointing device, a digitization tablet (the HI Pad, made by Houston Instruments). It workes with electrical wires and magnetic fields and uses a fix system. A mouse uses mechanical wheels and relative movements. // Liftarn 13:25 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

unless ECMAScript code on a particular page attempts to enforce weak security by disabling the right-click button (this practice heavily annoys most users, and none of the 100 most popular web sites do this).

Not sure this ECMAScript stuff is relevant here: this is a bit UI-specific. -- The Anome

Might be good not to use the word cursor -- stick with "mouse pointer". To a lot of folks, the "cursor" is the text insertion point; the "pointer" is the arrow- or hand-shaped thing the mouse moves around. Google suggests "mouse pointer" is more prevalent than "mouse cursor" by about 50%. Pedantic, yes. --FOo

I don't think that's overly perdantic & I agree with you on the terms. -- Tarquin 12:59 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)

Well, if we're being pedantic, some GUI systems (at least MS-Windows) refer to the text insertion point as the "caret" and the mouse pointer as the "cursor" in technical documentation. Suggest:

mention that it's called either a "cursor" or a "pointer"
use "mouse pointer" consistently throughout text
define what a cursor is ("a small picture that represents the active position of the mouse"), somewhere perhaps late in the article

Also, somewhere we need a more detailed writeup on GUI interaction styles in general. k.lee 08:01 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)

Critics of single-button mice point to these facts as evidence that mice should have more than one button.

Who are these critics? Inquiring minds want to know! Is there an Anti-Single-Button-Mouse-Society or did someone just make up some phantom critics in the name of half-hearted NPOV? Pete 18:54, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hello! I do not know about the "critics" but I know that when I started my research work on user interfaces some years ago I ran into one scientific study after another explaining how certain aspects of the single button mouse, such as the need for double clicks, made it a nightmare to use for several classes of users. I was overjoyed to hear that I was not the only individual in the world who was suffering endless frustration with the double click system. Even after years of mouse use I was still periodically clicking too fast or too slow, and swearing mightily each time or getting even more frustrated by holding it down. But my continued readings made me discover that a solution was sitting right under my nose. It turned out that MS Windows had, since a certain release, an option by which nearly all the double click functions (such as opening a file) could be converted to single click mode. I now live in bliss, being able to open folders, and do quite a lot of other things with a single click. I have never owned a Mac because of the price difference and other details, but I keep reading up on it because of my interest for some of its unique ways of permitting fast graphical markings such as color labels (removed in OS X but reinstated in the latest release in a slightly different and very interesting form) and the incredible ease by which any icon can be changed (or had been, since I have not yet checked if this is still possible with OS X) with any possible image. Because of these readings on the Mac user interface and the market of add-ons around it, I am certain that there must be a hidden function somewhere or a special software product made by a third party developer which makes it possible for those who have coordination problems or who are sometimes rythm-impaired like me to use a Mac with single clicking 99% of the time. So, please do not take my current state of bliss with one particular aspect of the MS Windows user interface to be a general endorsment of this user interface to the detriment of other user interfaces such as the OS X one, the AmigaDOs one, the Motif one, the JAVA one, and so on. AlainV, 20th of December 2003.

--

Hmm.

As you seem to know, a long time ago, mice had many buttons, and each one had a function. One button to select objects. Another button to open objects. Another button to move objects. And so on. With the invention of double-clicking, click-and-drag, and the like, those functions were increasingly assigned to the a single mouse button. (The reason this was done, ironically, is because user studies found that many people had trouble remembering which button did what. So they would move when they meant to open, etc.)

This, in turn, left a lot of people with multiple-button mice who had no use for the extra buttons. So those buttons were used for things like contextual menus. (Right-clicking.) This is now the case with Windows in its default state.

Now, of course, there is no reason why you cannot use a single-click interface with a single-button mouse. It's a function of the interface software, not the input device. Indeed, the Apple Mac OS has had a single-click option since version 8, which works just fine with the standard Apple one-button mouse.

In contrast, many important Windows functions are not available without the contextual menus, and hence, the second button. Which makes Windows difficult to use for people with limited finger dexterity, unless special hardware is purchased, or workarounds are implemented through the software.

-- Exia

I have a certain type of limited dexterity which makes double clicking nearly impossible in a predictable manner, constantly. I am delighted to know that the Mac now permits operations without double clicking. For years I would tell my friends who are Mac owners that their computer was very nice, but that each time I had to use a Mac (I do research on the nature of human-computer interaction, from the human side, but I do have to take a good look at different kinds of computers, sometimes) I found the double clicking rather hard. Then they would give me a sermon on the superiority of the Mac and the inferiority of anything else, and how I should abandon Windoze and get used to double clicking. Obviously, they did not know about that single click feature on the Mac. Just where do you turn it on? And what are those important Windows functions which "are not available without the contextual menus"? AlainV 23:25, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

In Mac System 9, single-click mode is activated by chosing View>As Buttons. (I think this was the way it was done in OS 8 as well, but don't remember perfectly.) There was also a "kiddie" interface that used this mode as far back as System 7, but this was just a shell, not a complete interface.

As far as Windows goes, there's no way (that I have found) to, for example, show properties or make shortcuts of objects on the desktop without right-clicking. (And I can't remember if there's a menu bar item to eject CD's.) You have to open a Windows Explorer window and navigate to the desktop to get a menu bar to perform these operations. Some applications also depend on right-clicking to access certain functions. There are, of course, ways to get around this, depending on your hardware and software configuration.

In my experience, Linux/Unix window managers tend to have the most options for configuring mouse actions.

--Exia

Thanks! Now, the trick will be to integrate this in articles. AlainV 02:43, 2004 May 25 (UTC)

I got redirected here when I was looking for information on HOW an optical mouse works. Maybe someone who knows could create an optical mouse page, or add to this one. Ec5618

I have the same question. HOW does an optical mouse work?

Me too! The article as it stood today offered a clue about image processing, but I've now added an external link which satisfied my curiosity. This is good stuff from Agilent, and I think it would be pointless to re-write it merely to avoid copyright. The diagrams, too, are excellent. Isidore 17:48, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Me too, but I think there _is_ a point in adding the content to wikipedia. Imagine the site disappear overnight and we would miss such content. Helix84 13:08, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why is a mouse called a mouse ? Until recently I was totally conviced it was because the wire makes think to amouse tail, but I recently discovered taht the moving device in jet fighter air intake is also called a mouse and has a somewhat similar shape. Ericd 02:59, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Whew making stone soup can get confusing sometimes... -- EmperorBMA / ブリイアン 10:56, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hate to be picky, but I always learned the plural of computer mouse was "mouses," not mice. It's one of those debatable things, but just to throw in my two cents... LockeShocke 19:29, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Me too. Without researching it, though, I suspect that "mice" has won out in recent years. Isidore 22:25, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The whole "One button or two?" section seems really awkward. It also seems completely out of proportion (too long) with how important the issue is. If you're really that interested, there are HCI references you can read. I think 2 paragraphs, or maybe 3, should be plenty: reasons for using a 1-button mouse, reasons for using a 2/3-button mouse, and possibly a paragraph for workarounds.

For example, there's a sizable chunk of text (the entire second paragraph) dealing with the issue of single/double-clicking an icon to open it. Then it goes on to admit that even 2-button systems typically require double-clicking, and even 1-button systems can be set up to open things by single-clicking. (So what was the point of that paragraph?)