Multi-Button OpenOfficeMouse At OOoCon 2009 265
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.
Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Funny)
Just put a mouse-roller on the damned keyboard instead.
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But the device in TFS sounds like a nightmare!
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Funny)
Grandparent meant the bottom of the keyboard.
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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.
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... 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.
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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.
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Or rather, an optical sensor. They're superior to track balls even before you take into account the bulk of the keyboard... trying to get that to roll smoothly would suck.
"Mouse roller?" (Score:2)
Just put a mouse-roller on the damned keyboard instead.
When I read that, I immediately thought of a keyboard with attached hamster wheel.
I want one.
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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.
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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?
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Keyboards I can understand, but why do you need to encrypt your mouse signal?
So that no one else can spoof your mouse and take control of your system from remote. It's still a HIG device. Are you sure you can't make a system think a mouse is suddenly a keyboard?
Re:Reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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.
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I have a mouse (Logitech MX Revolution) with the functional equivalent of 10 buttons.
You know, I though it was a pretty cool idea when I bought it, but I now must admit that I really only use 2 buttons.
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QFT. My current mouse has two side-buttons which I never click on purpose. Particularly the one on the thumb side just ensures that I randomly move back in my page history when I grip it wrong.
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Can't you just turn that function off? Or trade it for mine, I'm sure I#d be happy with it ;-)
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Not entirely. Human interface devices are very stubborn with PCs. That's why gamers still play on devices specifically designed for easy typing.
Most "revolutionary" devices o offer improvements, but as applications don't support them they're seldom used and quickly fall into obscurity.
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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)
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe SHOMO would be good; won't upset as many people.
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Imagine a Beowulf cluster!
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I keep my mouse stationary, and rotate Earth to scroll.
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
Re:A modest proposal ... (Score:5, Funny)
one downfall (Score:2)
That's nothing. I keep my mouse stationary, and rotate Earth to scroll.
This only works provided you only scroll in one direction, ever.
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Incorrect. Rotate mouse around it's vertical axis to change your direction of motion--the real bitch is holding the mouse over a radio button long enough to click.
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Why stop there? Mount a small LCD to it, throw in a small HDD, and call it a mouseputer.
Keep going. Replace the keyboard with a touchscreen, put a mic and speaker in it, and wifi/3G networking. Then put the CPU in it and let it run independent of a computer.
Nah... never mind. That sounds retarded.
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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!
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I've heard of a video editing keyboard that was a lot like that. I didn't see it for myself, I was told of this from a person that made a living selling high end computers for video editing. He could have been kidding, but it seemed plausible to me.
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Additional info for fps layout:
1st button for primary fire
2nd for secondary fire
3rd for "help" in game command (yelling for medic, etc.)
4rd for favorite weapon autoswitch
5th for voice chat (I hate voice activation for myself and when others have it on)
There are still many other actions I could use: flashlight, "use" key, jump/crouch, other in game com
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Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
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No shit. The whiners in this thread are like those who can only drive automatics complaining about the controls in a fighter jet.
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]
Re:I call Shenanigans (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no! They've put the WordPerfect 5.0 interface on a mouse!
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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
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Duh!
I forgot to close the italics bracket: The first line is a quote, the rest is my comment.
--
Regards
Metaphors (Score:5, Insightful)
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Finally, someone who got the joke!
Well, this is /. All the commenters above you probably didn't read the article, the summary, or even the commenters above *them*.
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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.
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Even if it is a joke, this is "man hours" (well, I hope "man minutes" in this case, really) that could have been better spent elsewhere.
For that matter, I don't even see the motivation behind an OOo conference at all at this stage (of the software and community around it). From my point of view, OOo is shipped with the vast majority of user oriented distributions for lack of a better choice, and while I praise Sun for the initial effort, the time has long come since they should have let the child (OOo) loos
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.
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Graphics systems used to have huge numbers of controls. Evans and Sutherland had a workstation with eight knobs, a trackball, a joystick, and a tablet. There's some justification for this in 3D CAD and animation programs - for example, it's really useful to be able to zoom while you're dragging, resizing, or drawing something. Mouse wheels were a big win in 3D work - at last, you could get that capability without nonstandard hardware. People who do character animation often have a knob or slider box on
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Yeah, someone obviously had never used those. I loved all 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]
It belongs to the "special" list... (Score:2)
...you know:
- MS Bob
- Star Wars Christmas Special
- Power Glove
- OpenOffice Mouse
- And this [roflrazzi.com]
Double the buttons (Score:5, Funny)
and you could start considering it for Emacs.
Are you kidding? Far better suited for VI (Score:2)
A button per mode. You could have edit mode, define macro mode, mode where you type only letters with no numbers, a mode where each key changes the background color of the editing window...
Emacs users never needed mice, and if we did we'd run M-x mouse and control it via the keyboard and meta keys.
Fuck it (Score:5, Funny)
We're doing 19 buttons
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Thing is starting to look like a keyboard and mouse had sex.
Seriously I don't think I can go on living without one.
For the reference impaired (Score:2)
Another great article ahead of it's time: here [theonion.com]. Again, note the date.
"Double click" functionality (Score:2)
"has double-click functionality on every button"
Oh yeah? Well, I can click MY mouse buttons three times fast, so there. My buddy has a mouse that allows him to click four times quickly.
I'd use one (Score:2)
Is for the Windows version (Score:2)
Digitizer (Score:2)
I had a Calcomp Digitizer tablet with 14 or so programmable buttons.... back in 1995.
That being said, I'll probably buy this to go along with my Nostromo n52.
Which is more scary? (Score:2)
Which of these is more scary?
I mean, to my knowledge, even MSOffice isn't popular enough to have its own conference or its own mouse! Every mouse I've seen with more than the standard number of buttons either has them mapped to web browser actions or to game functions.
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3. An official OpenOffice Snuggie [getsnuggie.com] that's worn at OpenOffice conventions.
HealBot (Score:2, Insightful)
this might explain the outrageous design (Score:2)
That mouse is fat too easy to use (Score:2)
I'm holding out for an emacs mouse
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.
Does Microsoft own Warmouse? (Score:2)
Heathens (Score:5, Funny)
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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?
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Actually, the Mighty Mouse has had right and left click (plus a scroll ball) for quite some time now.
The Magic Mouse added multitouch, not a second mouse button.
/Mikael
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Anybody tried one?
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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.
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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
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They removed the squeeze and pressing the scroll ball though so they reduced it from a four button to a two button mouse, and added multitouch.
Though afaik, only a small percentage of users used the expose functions of squeeze and center button for dashboard. So "nothing of value was lost" and all that. The ball became the entire top surface of the mouse, taking over scrolling AND adding multitouch gestures. I'm glad to see that ball go, it was a major point of failure - collected lint and typically stop
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].
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"An insane clown posse (they are all riding in one small car)"
What does a hip-hop duo [wikipedia.org] have to do with this?
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I keep my insanity confined to the bedroom. There is very little running, but many moks.
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Sure, if you want to go all high tech with string and everything. What's wrong with carving data into rocks? Not only is the data better protected but you have far better range when transmitting the data through the air as long as you keep your packets small.
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I use the side buttons to switch tools in microstation. (CAD program)
It's extraordinarily convenient.
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Exactly [google.com]
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.
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Please, where do I sign up to take part in this scheme?