An anonymous reader writes "WarMouse has announced their new multi-button OpenOfficeMouse for OpenOffice.org at the 2009 OOoCon in Orvieto, Italy. The mouse, which features 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, and an analog joystick, has double-click functionality on every button and stores up to 63 application and game profiles in its 512k of flash memory. The OpenOfficeMouse runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X; its customization software will be released as free and open source software." We couldn't decide if this was a protest against Apple's new magic mouse, an elaborate practical joke, or just plain insanity run amok. In any case, it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
We know. But the mouseball-on-keyboard is still a very nice idea. Compaq used to make a server keyboard with a mouseball. It lacked a keypad, for compactness. It was very functional, we who worked in the lab all loved that KB.
They're not useless - those stupid gadgety mice with a bazillion button ensures that the poor little 2 button and a wheel optical mice never cost more than $15. If simple mice were the norm I might be paying $75 for a decent one:).
True, but they're also hard to find if you want "just a basic" anything but USB mouse. For instance, it's very difficult to find an encrypted, bluetooth, full-sized, optical, wheel mouse without side-buttons.
Whoever thought side buttons are a good idea for a non-gaming mouse should be drug out into the street and pelted with rotten produce. Freakin' have to hold the mouse ever so gingerly if you don't want to accidentally flip web pages* or, if you're on a mac, something even more annoying.
*It's freakin' 2009. netbooks have 2GB of ram. Why the 'F does the page have to reload when I hit the back button, or two pages reload if I did so accidentally and hit the forward button immediately thereafter. Why aren't the fully rendered pages cached for several levels of back-ed-ness? (determined by some algorithm relating to the available RAM, to balance off use against the filesystem cache) If I need to reload, F5 is right there on the keyboard. My main use of tabs at the moment is because "back" is not implemented properly on any of the browsers I use.
Opera is excellent in this regard, and it's one of the reasons I use it. If you navigate back, not only will the page not have to refresh, but in nearly all cases, the page will be in the same state as it was left in after any Javascript had run on it. (Say, you clicked a couple of things and expanded some AJAX-y controls, the controls will still be expanded when you navigate back)
I *believe* that this even works after a restart->restore previous session, but honestly haven't experimented with it that
"Why the 'F does the page have to reload when I hit the back button"
Because a lot of web pages (including slashdot) are served with HTTP headers that tell the browser not to cache them, and the browser follows that directive. Yes, it's annoying. I use tabs for that reason too.
Doesn't look like much, but man was it functional. You can do more with this, with less effort, than the X-Box controller ever dreamed of. But without adequate software support, it just doesn't work with very many programs.
I actually have one in the other room, but I didn't want to dig it out just to take a picture.
Perhaps we could just mount a mouse ball on the bottom of a key board. You just move the whole keyboard around when you want to scroll. The 105 button mouse.
Why stop there? Mount a small LCD to it, throw in a small HDD, and call it a mouseputer. If you attach a chair to it it would be a SOMO (Small Office/Mouse Office).
That's nothing. I keep my mouse stationary, and rotate Earth to scroll.
You rotate Earth to scroll? I have a teamouse. It scrolls by Brownian motion and then I simply destroy the Universe when the cursor moves in a way I didn
What about scroll-wheel? My keyboard doesn't have one.. Even this bland featureless mouse oly has ONE? Even the old Microsoft Explorer had atleast two. I am not buying it until it has more scrollwheels!
Seriously. They're obviously not as l337 as we are. They don't know how hard it is to PvP in OpenOffice. Those damn characters come from everywhere using all kinds of punctuation weapons. Go troll elsewhere you n00bs
when he lays eyes on one of these -- 18 buttons! Seriously, I don't know how I would work this mouse as it looks cramped and it would be like learning a new keyboard layout.
Oh no! They've put the WordPerfect 5.0 interface on a mouse!
A lot of people seem to forget that WP 5.x was fully menu and mouse-driven. The many keyboard shortcuts where for those who wanted to work fast without the slow downs of reaching out for the mouse. WP 5.x was faster and much more ergonomically sound too than modern word processors in that respect.
WP would never need a 18 button mouse, in fact it was fully functional without a mouse at all.
I still miss my WordPerfect 5.1 and the "reveal code" (Alt-F
Too many choices and very confusing interfaces. Good job guys!
Yeah, but it's so customizable! Sure, you might get overwhelmed by the clutter and the huge number of rarely-used settings, and yeah, maybe the result is confusing and a little bit ugly. But boy oh boy, it sure is flexible!
And I'm sure the minute they started removing some of those buttons to try to clean things up, there'd be nerds coming out of the woodwork to complain...
the OpenOffice "effort" split into the (clumsy) user interface and (not that good) underlying render library? And make the whole thing available in a more free license?
While I resent using Microsoft Office because of its sheer cost (its business model being but a nail in the coffin), I have to admit that the look and feel of the Great Evil(tm) outweighs that of OpenOffice by (hundreds of) miles. Such a pointless effort from the OO staff just makes me wonder whether Sun (or is that Oracle?) just want to ditch OpenOffice altogether. Well, fine, but they could just ditch it by dropping support for it and changing its license so that a real, motivated community take it over and make something really useful out of it.
I used to use a 12"x12" digitizer tablet when working with AutoCAD back in the early 90s. The tablet overlay had a ton of controls to click, and the puck itself had 16 assignable buttons. It was incredibly useful to have all that functionality assigned and available right on the mouse while working with complex GUI-oriented programs.
It's too bad that hardware built today has little to no ability to just add or remove components as needed instead of designing a sepate piece of hardware for every possible combination. Imagine instead of buying a mouse with 18 buttons and tons of things you may or may not need; you could get a bare bones mouse that you could just clip on new components as you needed. As an analogy, it'd be like snapping lego blocks together to make different things yourself is better than having to buy a specific configuration of blocks that can not be modified. Want a 10 button mouse? get the components together and snap the pieces into place. Hate that trackball after all? swap it out for a laser tracking component instead. The possibilities are nearly endless. Of course, there's already something liek this just not for mice and such yet... Open hardware.
There already is a mouse like this and it was actually designed much better. The Naga, it has all the standard buttons and then it has another 12 on the side, its an interesting idea and would be rather useful in some gaming situations. They market it to MMO, I also think it would be rather nice to have in RTS
it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
You think that's crazy -- I've heard that some people keep an entire extra grid of buttons next to their mouse that has -- get this -- over *100* buttons. Not only that, but some of the really extreme cases out there actually develop *pure muscle memory* of where all those buttons are. There are even people who call themselves "Eee-Maxers" (sp? e-macksers maybe? emacsers?) who also memorize and even customize dozens of what they call "key chords" -- pressing multiple buttons simultaneously to extend vastly beyond the 100 key limitation.
The good: The multitouch worked very well. It was very responsive for scrolling and left & right clicking was a breeze. The special mutlitouch motions they included were fun and easy.
The bad: At this time the mouse doesn't support the pinch motion so no zooming in and out. NO MIDDLE CLICK!!! So if you use middle click to copy/paste into X11 apps this is gone. I did some googling, but I didn't have long with the mouse so I wanted to play as much as possible.
Agreeing with the parent post and adding a few extra.
You cannot customize the multi touch features. Two finger swipe goes forward or backward in Safari and goes to the next picture in iPhoto. Hopefully they come out with an ability to determine the function of two finger swipes (and other gestures).
No squeeze buttons. That's taking a long time to get used to.
The mouse is very slender and short which hurts the ergonomics for those with larger than small hands. This is probably the cause of the parents tw
Actually, it wasn't that long ago that the scroll wheel was added. I thought that was pretty cool. Also, the side buttons on my mouse are pretty useful while browsing the internet or gaming.
But if you're still attached to your same old mechanical ball-style mouse with only two buttons and no scroll wheel, I guess that's your prerogative.
Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Funny)
Just put a mouse-roller on the damned keyboard instead.
Re: (Score:2)
But the device in TFS sounds like a nightmare!
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Funny)
Grandparent meant the bottom of the keyboard.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Grandparent meant the bottom of the keyboard.
We know.
But the mouseball-on-keyboard is still a very nice idea. Compaq used to make a server keyboard with a mouseball. It lacked a keypad, for compactness. It was very functional, we who worked in the lab all loved that KB.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
... we who worked in the lab all loved that KB.
Can a keyboard handle that much love? Seems like it would get sort of... sticky...
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I know. I was going for informative, not funny. :S
Oh well. I can't complain.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't apologize. I'm as confused as you.
BTW, if you're looking for a laugh, perhaps this [slashdot.org] or this [slashdot.org] will elicit a chuckle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not useless - those stupid gadgety mice with a bazillion button ensures that the poor little 2 button and a wheel optical mice never cost more than $15. If simple mice were the norm I might be paying $75 for a decent one :).
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but they're also hard to find if you want "just a basic" anything but USB mouse. For instance, it's very difficult to find an encrypted, bluetooth, full-sized, optical, wheel mouse without side-buttons.
Whoever thought side buttons are a good idea for a non-gaming mouse should be drug out into the street and pelted with rotten produce. Freakin' have to hold the mouse ever so gingerly if you don't want to accidentally flip web pages* or, if you're on a mac, something even more annoying.
*It's freakin' 2009. netbooks have 2GB of ram. Why the 'F does the page have to reload when I hit the back button, or two pages reload if I did so accidentally and hit the forward button immediately thereafter. Why aren't the fully rendered pages cached for several levels of back-ed-ness? (determined by some algorithm relating to the available RAM, to balance off use against the filesystem cache) If I need to reload, F5 is right there on the keyboard. My main use of tabs at the moment is because "back" is not implemented properly on any of the browsers I use.
It seems I have a lot of anger.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, it's very difficult to find an encrypted, bluetooth, full-sized, optical, wheel mouse without side-buttons.
Keyboards I can understand, but why do you need to encrypt your mouse signal?
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Opera is excellent in this regard, and it's one of the reasons I use it. If you navigate back, not only will the page not have to refresh, but in nearly all cases, the page will be in the same state as it was left in after any Javascript had run on it. (Say, you clicked a couple of things and expanded some AJAX-y controls, the controls will still be expanded when you navigate back)
I *believe* that this even works after a restart->restore previous session, but honestly haven't experimented with it that
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why aren't the fully rendered pages cached for several levels of back-ed-ness"
Because then people will claim your browser has a memory leak.
Parent
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:4, Informative)
"Why the 'F does the page have to reload when I hit the back button"
Because a lot of web pages (including slashdot) are served with HTTP headers that tell the browser not to cache them, and the browser follows that directive. Yes, it's annoying. I use tabs for that reason too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.ideo.com/images/uploads/work/case-studies/large/Logitech_Cyberman2_cd.jpg [ideo.com]
Doesn't look like much, but man was it functional. You can do more with this, with less effort, than the X-Box controller ever dreamed of. But without adequate software support, it just doesn't work with very many programs.
I actually have one in the other room, but I didn't want to dig it out just to take a picture.
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They exist [dynamism.com]
A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe SHOMO would be good; won't upset as many people.
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I keep my mouse stationary, and rotate Earth to scroll.
Parent
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I keep my mouse stationary, and rotate Earth to scroll.
You rotate Earth to scroll? I have a teamouse. It scrolls by Brownian motion and then I simply destroy the Universe when the cursor moves in a way I didn
Parent
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What about scroll-wheel? My keyboard doesn't have one.. Even this bland featureless mouse oly has ONE? Even the old Microsoft Explorer had atleast two. I am not buying it until it has more scrollwheels!
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
I'd like to see Steve Jobs face (Score:5, Funny)
OS/X (Score:5, Funny)
WTF is OS/X? Bastard child of OS/2 and Mac OS X?
I call Shenanigans (Score:5, Funny)
It truly is the world of tomorrow... Today!
Re:I call Shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if anyone wants to see what this monstrosity looks like now that the site is slashdotted, I got this in the coral cache: http://www.openofficemouse.com.nyud.net/branding/images/OOM-OSS.jpg [nyud.net]
Parent
Re:I call Shenanigans (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no! They've put the WordPerfect 5.0 interface on a mouse!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh no! They've put the WordPerfect 5.0 interface on a mouse!
A lot of people seem to forget that WP 5.x was fully menu and mouse-driven. The many keyboard shortcuts where for those who wanted to work fast without the slow downs of reaching out for the mouse. WP 5.x was faster and much more ergonomically sound too than modern word processors in that respect.
WP would never need a 18 button mouse, in fact it was fully functional without a mouse at all.
I still miss my WordPerfect 5.1 and the "reveal code" (Alt-F
Metaphors (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many choices and very confusing interfaces. Good job guys!
Yeah, but it's so customizable! Sure, you might get overwhelmed by the clutter and the huge number of rarely-used settings, and yeah, maybe the result is confusing and a little bit ugly. But boy oh boy, it sure is flexible!
And I'm sure the minute they started removing some of those buttons to try to clean things up, there'd be nerds coming out of the woodwork to complain...
What if, for a start... (Score:4, Insightful)
the OpenOffice "effort" split into the (clumsy) user interface and (not that good) underlying render library? And make the whole thing available in a more free license?
Instead of coming up with such an ergonomical disaster [openofficemouse.com]?
While I resent using Microsoft Office because of its sheer cost (its business model being but a nail in the coffin), I have to admit that the look and feel of the Great Evil(tm) outweighs that of OpenOffice by (hundreds of) miles. Such a pointless effort from the OO staff just makes me wonder whether Sun (or is that Oracle?) just want to ditch OpenOffice altogether. Well, fine, but they could just ditch it by dropping support for it and changing its license so that a real, motivated community take it over and make something really useful out of it.
Tablet pucks (Score:2)
I used to use a 12"x12" digitizer tablet when working with AutoCAD back in the early 90s. The tablet overlay had a ton of controls to click, and the puck itself had 16 assignable buttons. It was incredibly useful to have all that functionality assigned and available right on the mouse while working with complex GUI-oriented programs.
Bring on the buttons.
Engadget handles Slashdotting much better... (Score:4, Informative)
So here's a better link if you want to see this monstrosity [engadget.com]. The guy earlier in this discussion who was joking about putting a mouse wheel on a standard keyboard wasn't far off.
I'm sure if anyone actually buys this a lot of wrist surgeons will rejoice...
overkill (Score:3, Insightful)
It's too bad that hardware built today has little to no ability to just add or remove components as needed instead of designing a sepate piece of hardware for every possible combination. Imagine instead of buying a mouse with 18 buttons and tons of things you may or may not need; you could get a bare bones mouse that you could just clip on new components as you needed. As an analogy, it'd be like snapping lego blocks together to make different things yourself is better than having to buy a specific configuration of blocks that can not be modified. Want a 10 button mouse? get the components together and snap the pieces into place. Hate that trackball after all? swap it out for a laser tracking component instead. The possibilities are nearly endless. Of course, there's already something liek this just not for mice and such yet... Open hardware.
RAZER Naga (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153054 [newegg.com]
Double the buttons (Score:5, Funny)
and you could start considering it for Emacs.
Fuck it (Score:5, Funny)
We're doing 19 buttons
It's like the Homermobile from the Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
18 Buttons? Madness! (Score:5, Funny)
it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
You think that's crazy -- I've heard that some people keep an entire extra grid of buttons next to their mouse that has -- get this -- over *100* buttons. Not only that, but some of the really extreme cases out there actually develop *pure muscle memory* of where all those buttons are. There are even people who call themselves "Eee-Maxers" (sp? e-macksers maybe? emacsers?) who also memorize and even customize dozens of what they call "key chords" -- pressing multiple buttons simultaneously to extend vastly beyond the 100 key limitation.
Heathens (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Well Apple just did away with even the 1 button they had on their mouse, so this offering appears to be the opposite end of the spectrum.
Wonder which will a success and which will fail?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I gave one a try just a couple of days ago.
The good:
The multitouch worked very well. It was very responsive for scrolling and left & right clicking was a breeze. The special mutlitouch motions they included were fun and easy.
The bad:
At this time the mouse doesn't support the pinch motion so no zooming in and out. NO MIDDLE CLICK!!! So if you use middle click to copy/paste into X11 apps this is gone. I did some googling, but I didn't have long with the mouse so I wanted to play as much as possible.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Agreeing with the parent post and adding a few extra.
You cannot customize the multi touch features. Two finger swipe goes forward or backward in Safari and goes to the next picture in iPhoto. Hopefully they come out with an ability to determine the function of two finger swipes (and other gestures).
No squeeze buttons. That's taking a long time to get used to.
The mouse is very slender and short which hurts the ergonomics for those with larger than small hands. This is probably the cause of the parents tw
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Funny)
Some guesses:
An insane bicyclist
An insane paraplegic
An insane clown posse (they are all riding in one small car)
Catatonia
Now that the snark is done:
Running amok is characterized by rage. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off isn't the same as running amok.
The more you know... [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re:God damnit (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it wasn't that long ago that the scroll wheel was added. I thought that was pretty cool. Also, the side buttons on my mouse are pretty useful while browsing the internet or gaming.
But if you're still attached to your same old mechanical ball-style mouse with only two buttons and no scroll wheel, I guess that's your prerogative.
Parent