Re: [Usability]Middle mouse button in galeon



On Fri, 2002-11-15 at 17:36, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Hi Tommi,
> 
> > My question is, would it be a reasonable default for galeon to use
> > middle mouse button for gestures and have it enabled by default?
> > Gestures are rather powerful feature and it would be nice to have them
> > also enabled in the default settings.
> 
> I really don't think that is a good idea. I imagine it would make
> middle-button-paste more difficult (don't move your mouse while clicking)
> and moreover it would confuse the heck out of users that aren't acquainted
> with the concept of gestures.

I had considered all but the last point, I'll try to explain better why
I think they shouldn't cause any serious trouble.  First of all, we can
make pasting by middle-button work on mouse down; you only paste on text
entries so it's probably reasonable to do pasting instead of gestures
there.  Granted that'll have a slight impact on the global availability
of gestures, but it should be tolerable.

Second, there's a threshold for mouse movement for detecting when mouse
is intentionally moved and not shook by accident.  That should make it
difficult enough to begin a gesture by accident.  The same threshold is
used in nautilus, for example, to know when to drag instead of click, so
the two problems are equivalent.  I don't recall anyone calling nautilus
broken in that regard.

The last point you mentioned, what if in spite of the failsafe the user
begins a gesture by accident?  Is it that much worse than starting a
drag by accident?  There's still the visual feedback from the cursor
changing (from a hand to a pencil) when the gesture begins, so there
would be prior warning before a gesture is performed.


> You could consider doing it like Opera: the first time a gesture is
> detected, pop up an informational application-modal dialog asking if you
> want to use gestures or not. But this is quite disruptive so if you ask
> me, the best thing to do is to have gestures disabled by default. Let them
> be enabled by some GNOME PowerUserTweakTool(TM).

It would be disruptive, but only for the first time.  Though, I'd prefer
having them either enabled or disabled by default, not something in
between.

Another question is that should the gestures be configurable from the
preferences dialog?  I'm not totally convinced they are a 'power user'
feature that shouldn't show up in the GUI.  I see them more as a simple
and powerful feature all users could use to their advantage.


-- 
Tommi Komulainen                                 tommi komulainen iki fi
GPG 1024D/68388EE6    6FD6 DD79 EB38 BF6F 3533  09C0 04A8 9871 6838 8EE6

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