different UI approach

Judy Perry jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu
Mon Jul 11 01:11:00 EDT 2005


IIRC, you are not on a Mac, are you Chipp?

I got mouse-finger (have you tried drawing with one?!!) until I first
moved to the Kensington four-button trackball, and, finally, to the
current fingerless (ask my husband, as he really hasn't got any) Mac
mouse.  No more mouse-finger!

FOR people who were already familiar with the PC qua keyboard-centered
DOS, the mouse-centric GUI was confusing, but if, as may well be likely,
you've read the literature, this was a deliberate attempt to force focus
onto the new GUI concept for THAT OTHER audience, namely, those who were
not already familiar with using a computer, and mouse-centricity was
central to the premise of Schneiderman's articulation of items of interest
and manipulation paradigm.

Which is why I find the whole 2 (and, by extension, 3) button mouse and
especially contextual mousebutton stuff in which you right-click on
nothing in the middle of nowhere stuff simply maddenning and a violation
of the paradigm.

But then, as you say, I guess it's all just what you become accustomed to.

It's easy to be old and grouchy ;-)

Judy

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005, Chipp Walters wrote:

> My inclination is to agree with you, Dan, but I do remember the
> absurdity of the mouse at it's inception, and how difficult it was to
> 'get used to' by the mainstream.
>
> Here are a couple observations...
>
> - You don't get 'mouse finger' (I get it all the time).
> - You probably get 'mouse wrist' if you used it often
> - Strong learning curve for gestures
> - Without gestures, you end up removing an existing dimension of
> interfaces (the click). Think about how you would select text with
> gestures...ouch!
> - It seems to work better with 'dynamic' environments which change as
> you navigate through them. Flash seems especially suited. But, as we all
>   know, changing app environments are particularly 'high' on the GUI
> 'nono' list.
>
> -Chipp




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