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Hardware

Mouse Fun from Microsoft 358

Posted by Roblimo from the touch-me-feel-me-move-me dept.
James Cook writes "A mouse that can sense when your hand touches it was built a while ago by the boys at Microsoft Research. It enables nifty user interface tricks, like toolbar menus that fade away when you aren't touching the mouse. I want one, then I want Linux drivers for it." Forget who built it. This looks like something worth having (once enough Linux software supports it to make it worthwhile.)
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Mouse Fun from Microsoft More

Mouse Fun from Microsoft

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  • This isn't a problem inherent to intellimice. Any mouse is capable of jumping to the default button.

    And quite honestly, I like not having to move my mouse. The less my hands leave the keyboard, the more work I can get done (like posting to Slashdot).
  • I don't know this for absolutly, but I'm pretty sure about what would happen. You would have the toolbar, take your hand off the mouse, and then the text would rise up to meet the now minimized toolbar. When you put your hand back on the mouse, the text would shrink down so that the toolbar doesn't cover anything. Or, if you use Internet Explorer or have access to it, there should be an option somewhere to make it "Full Screen" and it does basically the same thing I was talking about.
  • I think the wheel is worth the money. It's not too helpful in Linux, except it performs as the third button, but it's really nice in Windows. It's my one click to bring up Windows Explorer, and I can use it to scroll through web pages. It's faster than having to move the mouse pointer to the side scroll thing.

  • Re:why listen? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're too ignorant to make the changes, I have little simpathy.

    And you wonder why most people don't use Open Source. Seesh.
  • My ex GF had one of those. Whenever i whould touch it she could tell!)

    LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
  • I can see in the near future:
    FIRST EVER WEB SERVER RUN ON A MOUSE!!!

    Easy enough. Take one of those webserver-in-a-matchbox things and put it inside a serial mouse. :-)
  • This is probably the greatest idea ever in the field of computational interface technology (CIT)! Thank the Lord that the government haven't been able to hinder MS in their God given right to innovate. How on earth have we been able to get along without a mouse that is touch sensitive? Well, I for one don't know!!! What is next? A keyboard that activates once you touches it? Who else but MS can come up with these mind boggling inventions? Certainly not me, that's for sure!!!
    W S B
  • combine this with a date function and you have "where do you want to go today?" :)

    But seriously, the current intelli mouse driver already can make some assumptions about where you are going. I find it annoying and have it turned of most of the time but its there. It guesses to which GUI component you are moving your mouse and goes there automatically.
  • Before you start bashing MS about this, don't you think you should consider that a good 50% of Linux was designed in this manner?

    Of course, but with linux, bad ideas tend to die from lack of support. There are surely 10 times as many linux "features" that never became mainstream because they were lousy and didn't catch on. It doesn't work this way with MS, they make their stuff and push it onto customers. The only alternative is a "no to all".
  • Well they're examples of uses. It's up to application vendors to program what they do, and most likely they'll be user selectable.

    think for once.
  • just as a friend describing the menu's on W2K (they fade in and out), more "eye candy"....

  • Well, since you were wondering, I read it and here's a reply:

    I think the mouse post is actually pretty interesting although it might be more relevant if it wasn't just research and was actually going to be produced sometime soon....I'd definitly be interested.

    Definately agree that it was an interesting post, however I don't think something needs to be near production to be relevant. I mean for one thing its always nice to see whats out on the horizen. For another, I think the question sparked some useful debate and user interface issues, or at least it got me thinking about it.

    A few weeks ago there was an article about these one man, wearable jet packs (or something like that). I mean obviously those things are no where near production, but it was still kinda cool to read about them.

    I'd also have to agree that it's gotten to the point where there's to many stories....I used to actually go to Slashdot and at least read through each abstract but as of last I just go to my "daily page" that gets updated with the headlines once an hour and only come to /. if one of those looks interesting.

    I disagree, I think its a good thing to have a decently large number of stories published here. Even if you aren't interested in every single one of them, there's nothing wrong with skipping over ones that don't interest you, maybe you could even . (Well, I'll give a little bit on the Guide to Geek Love or whatever the hell that was... that did seem like a bit much).

    In part I'm posting for a totally different reason......I've been wondering how thoroughly these threads are read once the they're more than a few hours old and there's more than 75 posts. I'm guessing a HUGE majority of reader just leave their threshold at 3 or 4 and just read the few posts that make it that high.

    I would think that these things are pretty carefully read up to the first page or so of replies... I mean once it reaches 500 or so comments, then people probably just ignore the later ones.

    And on a final, slightly off topic note (but related to your comment), I keep my threshold at -1. Frankly I'd rather make my own decisions as to what are good remarks and what aren't.

  • The mouse that comes with the Wacom Intuos Tablets
    has this. Additionally it is wireless, needs no
    batteries, no ball and uses absolute positioning.

    Unfortunately the thumb wheel isnt supported at
    all under Linux. When I find the time Ill try to
    hack that into The Gimp at least.
  • ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-x, ctrl-z (copy, paste, cut, undo) you mean :)
  • The point is that most of the toolbar buttons are really useless clutter and cause confusion for the user. There is already a method to present the user with many organized options, it's called the 'pulldown menu'.

    I unfortunately must use M$ products at work, and I can tell you that I normally only use one or two of the stupid toolbar buttons at any time.
    I could go on, but I think ya'll get my point.
  • microsoft mice, keyboard, joysticks, etc etc, just don't compare to microsoft. Microsoft Scroll wheel is a joke:
    Remember the Microsoft mouse with the wheel - Intelli-Mouse? What a con! It would only work with applications that had been made to support the mouse wheel, such as Microsoft Office etc. You had to wait until Windows 98 to use it with other applications, unless you found a third party application.
    Logitech got it right from the start with their scroll wheel mice. Their mice could work with all (32 bit) applications, whether or not the applications supported it. With all the other features that MouseMan range has, they are far more suprior than the Microsoft Mouse.
    5 Mouse Button logitech mice is what logitech give us, so flexible and well, easier to use. When logitech bring out a version of this microsoft mice, it will offer soo much more than MS version... just wait.
    As for the MS natural keyboard, there are far cheaper keyboards than are just the same.
    Again, most people only use mice etc is because its microsoft and NOT because its the best... hmm, same as software.
  • DAMN DAMN!! its meant to say: microsoft mice, keyboard, joysticks, etc etc, just don't compare to LOGITECH!
  • as a user of ms-windows at work, this sounds like a great idea....


    on an unrelated note--what if we had a be-os cluster of these mice?
  • My notebook PC's touchpad (which controls the pointer) has software to add events to my touch ... touch to the top left corner maximizes window ... touch to the bottom left corner minimizes the window ... touch & drag the right side scrolls the window, etc.

    The touchpad recognizes not only that I'm touching it, but where I'm touching it. All kinds of software can be written to take advantage of the touchpad's events.

    Every other new notebook has one of these.

    Now how much research did it take to slip that "new technology" into a desktop rodent?

    The types of things that software can do is unlimited. As it is now, that software detects the touchpad events.

    It looks like all M$ did was add event handlers into their own software.

    Typical M$. Steal and profit.


    --
    I wrote the play & still own the script ...

  • what we need is a good 3d input device. THAT would be different.
  • And I can assure you they were annoying as hell! Every time we'd reach over to pick up something an arm would brush the lamp it would go on or off. Aaargh!

    I'm trying to think of a viable use for touch-mice (beyond eliminating M$ toolbars, which I'd much rather eliminate perminantly). Perhaps removing the cursor from the screen would be a useful function for a mouse like this. Basically it tells the computer that you're not using the mouse and can keep it out of the way, but fading toolbars would get annoying very quickly while a disappearing cursor isn't quite so bad.

  • mmmmmmmmm...one more protocol! (Score:4)

    by cdlu ( 65838 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:04PM (#1587781) Homepage
    Just what we always needed. Next thing you know we will have a mouse that detects where you _want_ to go. And if you actually move the mouse in a direction other then this predicted direction, a paperclip will come up and inform you that the mouse has travelled in the wrong direction.
  • Usually, the cord is strong enaugh to push the mouse around, even when you're not touching it. Implementing fading toolbars on move/no-move would give a very jumpy screen.
  • I have to say they're mice rule. I love their intellimouse, it gently fits the curvature of my hand. And that other mouse that takes a bunch of pictures is fairly cool too.

    This mouse will definatly revolutionize the porn industry. And the hell with those "Microsoft Suxs" people, they make good hardware.
  • Microsoft Mice.. bah

    I have been using the same armload of Logitech Class C mice for over a decade. No curves, no frills. Three matching square buttons on a lopsided little plastic box. They've outlasted every mouse I've bought since. Truly the Volvo of mice.
  • I work in an academic lab and we have a number of 3d pointing devices. The Logitech magellan that can simultaniously move through 6-degrees of freedom (translations rotations). As well as a spaceball thingy that also can rotate in 3d. They are out there, there just aren't many drivers for them. They also aren't quite as elegant as a mouse either, IMO. Mice are very "natural" feeling...

    -- Moondog

  • cool (Score:2)

    by Kyobu ( 12511 )
    I hate M$ as much as the next nerd, but I gotta say, this is pretty nifty. What with this and the IntelliMouse Exploder or whatever the gloy mouse is called, Billy's been making some cool toys in the rodent department. It might get kind of annoying to have stuff constantly blinking all the time, but if the interface was done right (yeah, right), it might be an improvement. Or maybe I'm dumb and it's just a pathetic marketing ploy.
  • isn't the slashdot software open source as well? I can go grab the code by just clicking on the "code [slashdot.org]" link in the left column....
  • So do you think Microsoft should pull out of the software market and concentrate on their superior hardware? :)

    IIRC, Microsoft came out with a light-operated mouse similar to the one on Sun's SPARC and called it their own. Everyone sure noone has come up with this before?
  • You mean; Microsoft corporatly takes over good hardware. That's where they got the intellimouse from! It was a small company that had a good idea, only their mice never seemed to work on 3.1 and they couldn't figure it out. When win95 came out, there was nothing they could do to get their mice to work. They went bankrupt and had to sell the whole works off... Who do you think bought the whole shooting match for 1 cent on the dollar? Don't kid yourself; people don't scream at them for stifling inovation for no reason, it was Microsoft! Intellimouse should have tried to go after the Mac market; Apple never compeates (intentionally) with it's developers and never blocks the inventions of others from working on their machines. The only problem with that idea, though, is that Mac users like myself tend to only buy one item at a time and we expect it to work for the life time of our machines (about 25 years...). Accessory developers dont make much money on a market like that.
  • A legitimate innovation by Microsoft!? Will wonders never cease?
  • I have a Mac with the original keyboard from 1984... What a year it was...


  • Supposedly. But lets see, how long has it been since a recent code change has been posted? (it's been a while since I've checked, but last time I checked it was quite a while)

    And then there's the use restrictions, you *must* link to slashdot from your site if you use slash...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Hey! Douglas Adams stole my idea!!!

    A few years back I made a little software program for my friends, said it was a preview of windows 2001. It was just a fullscreen visualbasic app that had a big button in the middle that said 'OK' - you click on it and it ran a random program.
  • A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (but his handle is Master Predator) loves his IBM keyboard: With his favorite keyboard he can burn rubber at 160WPM!
    They may be old, they may be heavy, but they worked like a charm!


  • "It enables nifty user interface tricks, like toolbar menus that fade away when you aren't touching the mouse."

    More eyecandy and stupid gui tricks from MS...how is this useful in the slightest? This is on par with the amazing zooming menus. A lot of use it is...anyway, if I'm not touching the mouse, I'm possibly gone from the computer, at which point it doesn't matter what tricks it does, I won't see it...
  • If such a silly mouse is big news, it shows that nothing has changed or been invented in UI in the last 20 or so years. It is sad to see most domains of computing progress and UI not move. And please, Mr. Gates seems to be fond of talking to his computer, but most people aren't and will not be. What's happening in UI?

  • The other disturbing trend is, toolbar elements you cannot remove, like on web browsers. . .

    I want and NEED a back, forward, reload, and stop buttons, maybe not forward. But definately, I DO not need, Home, Search, Netscape, Print, or Security, or especially SHOP. (end netscape criticism, start IE criticism:) I don't need a Favorites, History or Channels button wasting space on the toolbar (I think Favorites ought to be a menu, like in Netscape, right?) (okay, Netscape Windows, it's a toolbar button, netscape Mac, it's a menu item - so much for consistency across platforms) I wish I could also get rid of the Mail and Edit buttons on IE, because maybe I have a different Mail program, and don't want to use OE, and maybe I have a different HTML editor, and don't want to use frontpage, but the thing that REALLY irks me, is that Favorites is both a toolbar button AND a menu item. And the fullscreen button, take that off and shove it up your ass, wtf?! Isn't there a fullscreen button on every freaking window in the UI? Why do we need another fullscreen button? WASTE OF SPACE!!
    Not to mention that even the middle button in the upper-right widget set is redundant, because you can also fullscreen the window by double-clicking the toolbar, or pulling down the menu from the upper-left widget.

    I guess I just really hate how lame the Windows95 UI is.

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

  • Re:Microsoft Research (Score:3)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @09:43PM (#1587802) Homepage
    Tech Review [techreview.com] did an article on Lord Bill's Boys-in-the-Back-Room back in January. (Same issue they covered linux [techreview.com].) (Alas, no link to the M$ article.)

    Basically the article pointed out that The-Boys-From-Redmond are the only software house with a research arm (remember Xerox is fundamentally a hardware company.), M$ has beaucoup bucks, and a lot of big name people, but still has yet to create any sort of breakthrough. (compare to XeroxPARC that created the GUI in only a few years)

    The article suggests that the reason is that M$ is too secure in its position, and thus won't take the risks needed to motivate an R&D lab. Also the lab is too product driven and thus doesn't have the freedom just to go off and play.

    However, M$ Research has contributed to pretty much every recent major M$ product. Such contributions include data compression, and speech recognition. Oh yeah, you know that inference engine help uses in Office? M$ Research did that.

    Quote For You!

    M$ Research Director Dan Ling on where M$ needs to do more research (pg49):
    "The amount of time and effort that goes into testing software and getting the bugs out is enormous. And yet there are still bugs, and people still complain and say nasty things. We're trying to think about breakthroughs that we can make to dramtically improve the quality of software."

    (2 weeks later M$ "innovates" lint.)
  • Oh, the right button in Windows? That's for waiting 15+ seconds for the CM to popup.

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • Same reason as for the wheelmouse: the touch/no-touch events should map to X-events, probably specific to XFree. The applications (eg. the toolkits) should understand these events and implement them. Since there are many toolkits and even more applications, support will be very limited.
    Too bad, I kinda like the idea.
  • Wayfarer wrote:

    I'd like to see computers and household appliances in general become more user-aware. A mouse that detects you is a start. What about a phone that detects when you're asleep and silently routes calls to your answering machine if you are? And a monitor that's only on if you're sitting in front of it?

    Sensitive technology is fun.


    I agree -- I like things like this, but only when they work well, and "working well" is rare. Not the designers' fault exactly, more that people use technology of all sorts in individual ways.

    The problem is that there are a lot of things to go wrong, because the logic that controls sensitive technology has to second-guess the user constantly. What does it mean that the mouse hasn't been touched for a while? Does it mean the user isn't interested in seeing menus? (Y / N)

    The idea of a monitor that turns off when you're not in front of it, for instance, is an interesting one -- but what if you're playing a DVD on your monitor screen and sitting on your couch a bit further away?

    Same with the phone that directs calls while you're sleeping to a (presumably silent) asnwering machine. It would be great ... mostly. But what if you're relying on a phone call to wake you up, or there's a true emergency?

    The catch with all of this "sensitive technology" is the difficulty of predicting inherently ambiguous possibilities, and providing easy escape mechanisms so users can enjoy the "dumb" way of doing thngs when that's what actually makes sense.

    Sites like the User Interface Hall of Shame have done a good job gathering examples, but we all know of good ones -- UI designs (not just in computers, in all contexts) where the intended message is not well-expressed by the interface.

    I recommend the book by Donald A. Norman called THe Design of Everyday Things to anyone designing anything (software, house, manual) which will be used by other people unfamiliar with its design. In fact, I think everyone should read this book! Everyone! Everyone!

    Just a thought,

    timothy


  • Will the mouse call the SPCA when I abuse it during Quake III matches?
  • I was just checking out the research link and am amazed at the amount of research MS has...

    Some even in Beijing, China...how do they pull /that/ off??
  • Optical mice or woefully overrated; their primary deficiency is the lack of precision in the feel of their movement. My theory is that since an optical mouse has to transition from static friction to kinetic friction it results in a herky-jerky yet vague feel, and it's particularly noticeable because few mouse movements are sustained in one direction. Non-optical mice have balls which roll, employing static friction the entire time if they don't slip.

    This has contributed to the continuing lack of popularity, and hence dearth of ancillary features, like ergonomics, wheels and greater than 3 buttons. I think optical mice are only good for CAD type applications, where pixel-based precision is required.

    BTW, I hate MS software, but I love MS hardware -- I have a Natural Elite keyboard, and love every keystroke. The Win95 keys are good for alternate mappings.


    *** Proven iconoclast, aspiring bohemian. ***
  • I quite agree. Miscrosoft's real strength is in mice and joysticks.

  • You should work where I work. I can't believe how little room the people here leave for actual editing space. Some people have about four or five rows of toolbars in addition to all the other stuff. Less than half the screen is the actual document. I have no idea how they work like that... A magical touch mouse solution is probably just what they'd want.

    . . . along with their powered chair with back massager, glow-in-the-dark pencil holder, and dangly monitor ornaments (post-it notes).

    Personally, I only have one thing on my monitor - a Dilbert clipping.

    -d9

  • .. the other research projects?

    if you look at the Functional Reactive
  • Sorry folks, but the ultimate keyboard is the old, nasty, hardcore IBM bulletproof models that used to live on their PS/2 machines. These are the keyboards that are circa 1991 (according to the date on the back of mine.) and are obviously descended from the days when a computer took up an entire room and required a team of geeks complete with slide rules to run 'em. They are massive as a 50's Buick, require a team of weightlifters with levers to move around, require lots and lots of positive force to push the keys down, respond with a loud, ear damaging, obnoxious, but somehow wonderful *CLICK!*, and most probably cause serious nerve damage -- BUT -- they don't have those damn windows keys, and are the most durable keyboards known to man.

    I know, because the one I am currently typing on was salvaged from an old parts sale at a local college, where it was pounded on for 8 years by ham-fisted CS majors. All other keyboards are to this keyboard what a sheet of toilet paper is to kevlar.

    (And I have 4 of em! yippee!)

    so naturally, because they are the best keyboards ever, you can't buy them anymore.

    Such is progress.

    Lotek---

  • Ok. So it's nice that M$ is starting to 'invent' (well... Ok. Steal old tech that didn't make it at the time). But how about if they try and sell it to do something useful then?

    I mean. I navigate with my mouse (err... Trackball). If I wanted the toolbars to go away it would be when I'm not near them or something. It would do no good if they where gone when I wasn't touching the mouse. I am in more need of it when I want to scroll around some document and see if I got it all right. Now if they REALLY want to sell mice that feels when they are touched. They shuld do something like figureing out who is using the mouse and make the system switch to act they way (s)he want's it to act or something else useful (I'm hard pressed to find a good application for touch/release events tho). All this just seems like something M$ would like to sell us and finds a couple of arguments that sounds good if you don't think about them.

    Oh well... I'll never give up my trusty trackball... Well... Maybe when they offer me full sensory input and a 3D interface that's usable ;)
  • I have to say, it looks like a pretty good idea, but I think having parts of an application appear and disappear would confuse new users.
    No, it would confuse old users. New users probably wouldn't have any more trouble with toolbars that only appear when you touch the mouse, than they do with menus that only appear when you click on the menu bar, or a save dialog that only appears when you hit "Save As...", or tooltips that only appear when the pointer lingers over a control.

    I think this is a marvelous idea... Toolbars generally aren't keyboard-accessible anyway, so why should they be visible if I don't have my hand on the mouse?
  • If I have cybersex, will I loose my virginity?
    Uh, like using a mouse and a pointing device?

    I don't think I should've taken those beers... ;)
  • the day Microsoft makes something that doesn't blow, is the day they start making leaf blowers.

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • Hmmm... wouldn't surprise me if they were the ones that came up with the brilliant innovation that is the Annoying Talking Paperclip (TM).
    --
    - Sean
  • .. the other research projects? if you look at the Functional Reactive Animation pages.. under the notes you will find ..

    "Fran works with Windows only. You'll need DirectX version 3 or better. I recommend that you get the latest version if you have Windows 95 or 98, or NT 5.0. DirectX 3 works with NT 4.0 if you have Service pack 3 installed (available via the DirectX 5 page). My plan for Unix, etc., is to wait until DirectX is running there (in the works, but I don't know any of the details)."

    .. the page does say that it was just update 4 days ago....

  • After poking around Microsoft's research site for a while, I realized that there were actually some cool and/or interesting projects listed. For example, some guy is writing an implementation of IPv6 for NT... it's even downloadable so users can test it out. Someone else has designed a PDA pen that recognizes handwriting with accelerometers and stores the text. Very cool... they've even built a prototype.

    I guess the point is this:
    Even if a lot of people don't agree with Microsoft's "business practices" and don't like its software, there are people within the company who do some cool things. Many of those people could have ended up in any number of other places, but they happen to work for a company a lot of people dislike. I think each product from Microsoft should be evaluated on its own merits. Despite the crappiness of some of their past products, some of the stuff they're researching looks insteresting at the very least.
  • At Georgia Tech I'm working on a project that will allow you to control the mouse by thinking. It's for people who are completely paralyzed. The downside is that you have to have electrodes implanted in your brain for it to work. Check out http://www.neuralsignals.com
  • I've always been one of those slashdotters that watched mostly and posted only on an extreme fiew occasions. Perhaps the reason the number of stories/posts seems so overwhelming (and it does to me too) is because slashdot in it's current format no longer is conducive to the ideas it was created with. As much as I hate overcomplication, maybe stories, posts, and the like need a new way of being sorted and presented. It's just my two cents, but nothing can stay the same forever and hope to survive. If there was a way for slashdotters to more easily get to the topics they are interested in, they might more easily learn about those topics. Simply having a list of topics and a pile of posts about those topics might not be the answer anymore. Now there is the ability to filter out certain topics and subjects, scores, and on and on.. but maybe there is a simpler way. I am not trying to take anything away from all those who make this sight possible, as I love to read it most everyday.. but I think we should have a discussion as a community as to where we want our (their?) site to go in the future. Thanks for listening....
  • Ok I have this awesome trackball from logitech [logitech.com], 80 bucks. It's been around for a while, I doubt there will be any applications that use the 4th button to emulate the scroll wheel like it should. Atleast any time soon. In rxvt there are some options about 4 and 5 button trackballs and I've tried it and it doesn't work. This is why I don't think something like this would come into universal use any time soon. Perhaps if they were hyped more and were affordable, durable, etc, then maybe this would become a reality. But hell, it's just a friggin gui trick, I'm not losing any sleep over it

  • I'd never heard of this thing, but a quick google search (I love that search engine) came up with this for all those interested...

    http://www.nashville.net/~theremin/ [nashville.net]
    ---
  • I saw the band "Man, or Astroman?" play a Therman once. It was cool. They also played a computer keyboard and some other weird stuff.

    -Greg
  • Nobody ever said it was impossible for somebody at Microsoft to come up with something good. It would be absurd to think that mere complete moral decay and evilness precluded the possibility of bright ideas ;)
    What's wrong with this picture? Only that MS will certainly patent the idea and then do everything possible to crush anyone else working in the same area. There are no individuals doing cool things at Microsoft for the very simple reason that to Microsoft they are not individuals but part of The Great Microsoft Irresistible Force, which is dedicated to 100% world domination, as seen in lots of thoughtful quotes on record such as 'We only want a reasonable marketshare. What is reasonable? We think 100% is reasonable.'
    You simply cannot restrict a pragmatic view to only what these people produce. The true pragmatist has got to look at what they _do_ as well, and ask whether it's worth it to cherry-pick what bright ideas MS does have, at the expense of continually helping them crush everyone else's bright ideas. At what point does this become not worth it? For me that happened some time ago, so I have to be unmoved by reports of MS bright ideas. I _know_ they can have good ideas. They own _people_, literally own the minds of thousands upon thousands of people, some of which did great work on their own before they were assimilated. MS may have only wanted to get such people out of circulation, but why should I or anybody be surprised if such people continue thinking of great things even in captivity? Well-paid captivity, I'll grant. Why not think of who benefits from such ideas? If you only consider utility and convenience and don't consider power, you set yourself up to be exploited, and to whinge later on how you _wanted_ to be exploited because you walked into the situation of your own free will. This is merely rationalization for your lack of foresight- nobody wants to be exploited.
  • Yeah, those original, lopsided plastic box Logitech mice last forever. My brother is still using one that's over a decade old now too. A dog chewed through the cable once, but we stole a fresh cable off of a modern day cheap mouse that had died and the darn thing still works great.
  • Ummm... dude? Did you actually look at the screenshots in the article?
    --
    - Sean
  • As far as your first behavior, the mouse pointer, MacOS TextEdit APIs do this by default and always have. That's basically every text entry place in every Mac program for every Mac ever made, because custom controls ended up having to duplicate the behavior or look stupid. We LOVE this behavior too, and I can't wait to see it show up in Linux, typing under a pointer is tiresome and obscures what you're typing.
    The second behavior is no kind of default mac behavior, but there's been a extensions hack for years that does exactly this. It's pretty cool, though doing hacks like that on MacOS isn't a safe thing and can make lotsa crashes if you run the wrong program. I believe it does it by changing the MenuBarHeight value- it's officially a varying value anyhow, because internationalisation requires that some languages get more space to show ideograms or things up there :)
  • A huge number of posts here say that
    1) Disappearing UI stuff is a cool idea
    2) It's debatable whether a touch sensor is really needed to make the UI enhancements mentioned.

    Am I the only one that doesn't get it? Why would you want your toolbars, menus, icons etc. to disappear? It sounds very annoying, as well as confusing for newbies.

    If you think automatically disappearing UI elements is a neat idea, and you use Win9x/WinNT regularly, try setting your taskbar to "AutoHide", and see if you still like the idea. I tried it for a while. I thought it would be great to get a little extra on-screen real estate. I've since changed my mind. It was always popping up when I didn't want it. It was slow, because I had to move the mouse to the bottom of the screen to pop the taskbar up, then I had to read the taskbar, then choose which item I wanted. When it's visible all the time, I can just move to the button I want directly, and it's much faster.

    That's the whole point of a toolbar, it's supposed to be a FAST shortcut to a menu item. If it's invisible, selecting an item will take longer, and the purpose is defeated.

    I'd turn off those pop-up tooltips things, too, if I knew how. They're always popping up and obscuring the control I'm really after.

    Years ago, I worked as a Macintosh computer lab assistant. There were plenty of users who couldn't handle a mouse with ONE button, and NO strange self-disappearing UI features. I've seen plenty of intelligent folks (like me, sometimes) who still don't know when to double click and when to single click. I know otherwise graceful and coordinated people who have to try several times to complete a single double click successfully. My point is that if we need to change things about the accepted norms for GUIs at this point, I think we need to make them simpler and more consistent, not more complicated and more confusing.

    To anyone who is interested in such matters, I'd reccomend the recently-slashdot-mentioned User Interface Hall Of Shame [iarchitect.com]. Among the "Rules Of Thumb" for good UI design is "Make new-user features visible and accessible." Making things disappear clearly violates that one.
  • in the CHI'99 paper that they offered a possible application for the touch sensitive wheel beyond what a user would want?

    Reading sensor: We already use the wheel touch sensor in the On-Demand interface to sense when the user begins a scrolling interaction. Since IntelliMouse users often leave their finger perched on the wheel while reading, an intriguing possibility is that dwell time on the wheel may prove useful as a predictor of how much time the user has spent reading content on a web page, for example. We have not yet tested the wheel sensor in this role.

    Great, another way to suruptiously extract information from web users.

    I like the way they hid this aspect deep within the document.

  • Troll.

    Not at all. Microsoft's mouse is seriously pretty cool, and I haven't seen anything quite like it. It tracks without a grid pad, unlike the Sun mice. There is nothing truly new under the sun, but as a product, Microsoft's mouse is innovative and worthy of praise.

    Now their operating systems, on the other hand... Actually, I can't complain too much about NT, but 98's rate of crashing seems to be increasing on me. Argh!
  • It's that simple. They don't need to take the effort to make good ideas into products as long as they can prevent anyone else from having them. You can depend that they are trying to patent everything they can, and that the patents are certainly not going to the person who had the idea, but to the Company.
    If you don't like this, don't buy MS stuff, because it's all quite legal and business as usual. The only difference is that MS has more power than most entire countries, more money, and can buy out just about anybody- hence the numbers of brilliant people working at MS without any visible consequences to the MS customer- because you the customer are dirt, and for _your_ applications they make teams of recent college graduates and have them working 90 hours a week or more and sleeping under their desks like trapped animals. _You_ don't get the brilliant ones, oh no! Those are reserved for making patent applications so no competing Brilliant One can offer you anything better than the rubbish you're fed by MS Consumer Level.
    If you don't like this, don't buy MS stuff, because it's all quite legal and business as usual... and frankly the way these things are set up, that's the only way to go if you're an MS. It maximizes return on human investment and blocks other people's innovation as effectively as possible. If they had to actually bother to benefit the consumer with the good ideas, the Brilliant Ones would be slowed down and not make as many patent proposals. Naturally a bit trickles down anyhow, but there is no reason that has to continue, and ideally for MS, it would stop so ALL the Brilliant Ones' efforts could be solely towards intellectual property with no requirement to do anything with it at all. Now _that_ would be _efficient_. You could own everything in the field of computing in five years if you didn't actually have to produce any of it as products!
    If you don't like this, don't buy MS stuff.

  • Touch, why? I want force feedback. (Score:3)

    by Arguile ( 103769 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @11:04PM (#1587877)
    I can't wait to 3D model with a force feedback mouse. Need to stretch that vertex ever so slightly? Just increase the tension and slowly push it in. It's like working with virtual clay. And talk about cool image maps, when feel a ripply water effect under your hand or maybe a rough stone gateway. Not to mention the possible application for the visually impared, feeling the pointer drop into the the scroll bar around a window. You can have your touchy mouse, I want a feely one. P.S. I know somewhere in Palo-Alto California there is a company making this, I just wish I remebered whom. Read that article years ago.
  • Ok, I took a closer look...I guess the benefit is screen space. But the tradeoff is accessibility. Just think, how long does it take you to hunt for the right button in a large series of toolbars...how long did it take to train your brain to go to the right places for certain functions. I think it might actually be more confusing to see all your options which were previously visible disappear and reappear....your brain would have to re-hunt for the right button, etc. I think in general, in human factors research, disappearing/unpredictable UI is not a good thing.
  • I'm not sure how new and exciting this is. Thinking of a screensaver, I think this is very similar to what we already have.

    When most people touch the mouse, they can't help but move it. What's keeping the applications of today from having toolbars fade away after an input timeout and come back as soon as the mouse is moved slightly (in most cases, that would be when it's touched).

    Is it a cool invention? Sure, it's great to make devices more responsive to natural human movements, but I don't see this as revolutionary... moreover, I stuggle to think of even one piece of real functionality that this mouse would enable, that cannot be done today.

    But maybe that's just me...
    RP

  • Touch sensors (Score:4)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:11PM (#1587896) Homepage Journal
    Touch sensors are old tech. It has a high-frequency oscillator connected to the conductive case, and when someone touches the case, their body capacitance changes the frequency of the oscillator. Or you can do it with infra-red. Easy to build. You can even detect when someone's hand is close, not touching. Remember the Therimin? Poor Dr. Therimin got his life ruined by the Soviets, he wanted to make it a respectible musical instrument and they wanted him to work on military technology and essentially kept him under house arrest for decades.

    Bruce

  • this is a solution to a problem microsoft created. (Score:4)

    by thal ( 33211 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:11PM (#1587904) Homepage
    the ironic part of this device, and the test page for it, is the total and absolute useless clutter they show in the toolbar of MS WORD. how many functions does a damned word processor need and how many of them can readily recognized by a 8x8 pixel icon?! i don't understand 1/5 of the icons i see when i use MS WORD. this is the reason we have pull down menus. they're a good thing. you don't need some $200 mouse to simulate the same thing.
  • If nothing else, MS knows how to make mice. I swear by MS mice and havent been swayed by anything else since I tried the first MS mouse. Every other mouse at the time felt cheap and flimsy. I guess what I really liked about it was the weight, it helped it track smooth. Not to mention reliability, every MS mouse I've bought still works to this day (including the first, although it doesn't get much use anymore).

    The wheel of course is amazing, to me at least. Yea, its nice when browsing through web pages or a few thousand lines of code, but it really shines in TF. Any serious TF nut will tell you the key to the game is grenades. With the wheel, you can roll up or down to prime either type of grenade, and press it to throw. Deadly.

    On a slightly off topic note, has anyone tried their new optical mouse? Is it worth it?
  • Posted by Mike@ABC:

    Hey, I've met some of the folks at Microsoft Research, and they are some of the brightest, coolest people around. Their work is top notch, and what's more, they freely share it within the academic community. Sure, Microsoft enjoys the fruits of their labors, but MSR's research is about as academically pure as one can get. Bell Labs, IBM Research and others are in the same boat, and nobody complains about them! The folks there don't see it as captivity -- they're very good academics who are happy to be getting great salaries for doing what they love, and not having to teach a bunch of drooling undergrads.


  • ... of teledildonics is one step closer to reality. If they can have "Touch" and "Release" events, then how far can we be from "Grope", "Squeeze", and "Knead"?

    More seriously, how does this work if you're touching the mouse with something non-conductive, like a cast, a prosthesis, or a bandaged hand?

    mike

  • I have to say, it looks like a pretty good idea, but I think having parts of an application appear and disappear would confuse new users. It makes you sigh...
  • ...and who owns the results?
    Nothing you're saying contradicts what I said, nor am I making out Bell Labs as some sort of ethical wonderland. The only difference is that Bell has/had a deeply ingrained 'service ethic' from when they were a legal monopoly and felt like part of the government, and Microsoft has/had a deeply ingrained shark ethic in which they try to kill everybody else. That's why stuffing MS full of patents and IP is harmful. I never claimed the ivory tower guys were bad people, just that they are not free. They're not. They are kept.

  • What is it good for? (Score:4)

    by Spire ( 101081 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:17PM (#1587946)
    The "killer app" described on the Touch Mouse Web page is the ability to "simplify & reduce screen clutter". This is accomplished by removing mouse-oriented UI elements, such as toolbars, whenever the user isn't touching the mouse. Well and good -- except for two things:

    1. Almost the same thing is easily accomplished with a non-Touch-Mouse by simply monitoring the time since the last mouse movement. If the user hasn't moved the mouse in, say, five seconds, remove the "extraneous" toolbars. As soon as the user moves the mouse again, fade the toolbars back in. I believe that this is sufficiently similar to the behavior of the Touch Mouse to render the Touch Mouse not really worth the trouble (at least for this purpose).

    2. The toolbars aren't necessarily extraneous at all. Many toolbar buttons provide useful visual feedback. For example, in Microsoft Word, one can easily tell whether the current insertion point is in "bold" mode by glancing at the "B" button on the style toolbar, and checking if it's depressed or not.

    Comclusion: The Touch Mouse, as presented on the Microsoft Web page, is an interesting idea, but not exactly compelling at this stage.
  • Maybe I'm being a bit too cynical, but coming from a department where I have to sometimes give technical support...

    I think it sucks.

    I can only imagine the frustration that people in my position will have, once/if these rodents become commonplace. Calls about "Why won't x program let me do this?" from the keyboarders, and "Why does this stuff keep popping up and obscuring my text?" from the mousers.

    I shudder to think of how slow software like this would be on less-than-adequate systems (like the 486s that some slobs are still stuck with at work). Maybe I'm being too hard, but I prefer a simple command-line interface, not fading toolboxes combined with hardware that's a little too friendly.

    Aw, hell. We all know that whatever the Evil empire wants us to use people will start using. I can live without wheel mice, but now that they're so popular, everyone just *has* to have one. One more frustration in the life of a lowly PC/LAN tech.

  • Re:Microsoft (Score:3)

    by sinator ( 7980 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:20PM (#1587966)
    Maybe MS Should go into making hardware instead of software (I am a fan of their mice/keyboard), but something tells me MicroHard(R) probably won't go over well with the stockholders. On second thought, maybe it will... (that ain't stock they're holding!)

    On a more serious note, I like the work that Microsoft research labs do. I saw an interesting article in a magazine a few months back, comparing Linus Torvalds and the GNOME team to Bill Gates and Microsoft Research labs (does anyone know the magazine or article, and if its available online?)

    Microsoft Research to me is what PARC was in the 70's... they're heavily into UI research, namely natural-language UI research, because it's inevitable that voice controlled computers need to grasp natural languages. Personally, I'm a big fan of the consistency of Microsoft's UI's as compared to the forest of X toolkits (it doesn't compare to NeXTstep or MacOS or Be), personally they should drop the OS thing and go into UI and applications management (IMHO). Oh well, enough pipe dreaming.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Well, looks like Microsoft will have even more annoying features to add to Windows 2k. I am imagineing all these features coming together to form one huge piece of Bloatware. I don't want silly features, I want functionality.

    I can think of one good thing it can be used for. If these kinds of things become widely used, it could be used in multiplayer gameing. Once the person lets go of the mouse, he freezes, and is inserted into a reduced damage/ invincible state.. Imagine being able to type a message in Tribes, or Quake without having to worry about being fraged.. Of cource this bring up a lot of other problems too. But it seems like a possibility to me. What else would you use somthing like this for?

    ((Just adding more ideas))
  • You're crazy.

    Seriously, though, it talks about some kind of zooming control being part of the mouse, and the code is probably for that. There's [probably also a control panel .cpl file, but looking at my NT files, none of them is over 250k.
  • Sure, this isn't new tech, but it is an application of touch sensing that hasn't seen
    widespread adoption in the computing world.
    Regardless of how new the technology is, it still
    provides a new and potentially quite useful
    capability to the GUI.

    Thomas S. Howard
  • As someone else mentioned, Microsoft Research is not "product-focused". They have a 5-10 year outlook. Some of their technology, though, has been incorporated in real Microsoft products. I believe the Office grammar checker, Office paper clip help (not necessarily the paper clip icon, but the "smart" help), and the Microsoft Chat avatars.

  • Microsoft Research (Score:3)

    by JordanH ( 75307 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @07:28PM (#1588010) Homepage Journal
    What people should remember here is that this is Microsoft Research. You know, the guys who had ESR out to talk?

    Microsoft has hired a lot of top people for their Research arm, and they do a lot of cool stuff, but I've yet to hear of anything they are doing making it into a product. There is a story that some research from Microsoft, about 15 years ago, led to a genetic algorithm that found a more efficient way to convert a string of digits to a binary representation, but I can't recall the details. I think Microsoft Research does what they do as a marketing activity, to prove that Microsoft can do "pure" research just like other highly capitalized high-tech businesses.

    Microsoft Product divisions are all too busy renaming their distributed object technology, again, to actually integrate any real innovations.

  • the ironic part of this device, and the test page for it, is the total and absolute useless clutter they showin the toolbar of MS WORD. how many functions does a damned word processor need

    Oh come on, they showed a lot of the buttons at once just to demonstrate their new little toy. Obviously very few people would actually need that many functions, however its nice to have the option to put whatever you want on that toolbar. The last time I checked you could customize the bar to contain as much or as little as you want.

    And yes, it is useful to have a word processor that can do a lot of functions. Maybe you don't have a use for that many, but I'm sure there are are other people out there who do.

    and how many of them can readily recognized by a 8x8 pixel icon?! i don't understand 1/5 of the icons i see wAhen i use MS WORD. this is the reason we have pull down menus. they're a good thing. you don't need

    Its all a matter of how frequently you are using certain tools. Maybe there are people who can and do use all of those little icons. Again, its nice to have the choice.

    The point is that, I don't see how you can claim that microsoft created a problem by including all of these features. I mean you can turn them off if you want. Besides, every other piece of software from word perfect to netscape pretty much uses the same style of toolbar.

    On the other hand, I do agree that this does seem a little pointless for what would probably be a 200 dollar piece of equipment. Plus I have my own gripes about the usefulness of the example they showed... but those were covered in another post, so never mind with them now.

  • OK, I suppose I should have done a little research of my own. It seems that from reading the Microsoft Research Home Page [microsoft.com] that some of their innovations have apparently made it into products. A pretty anemic list, if you ask me.

    Also, they've only existed since 1991, so they couldn't have come up with something 15 years ago.

  • About MS Research (Score:3)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @08:13PM (#1588046) Homepage
    Microsoft has a distinction called being a "Microsoft Research Fellow" (meant to be a title of distinction - not just joe bloe shmoe). I've attended a couple of lectures by Microsoft Research Fellows in the past and have been amazed at their knowledge - these people are not faking their intelligence.

    What I want to know is, if Microsoft has all of these researchers that innovate so well, why can't they get the infrastructure in their own company to funnel this research directly into products? There is no point in letting this research go to waste, which is what I truly believe happens. Or another possibility would be to open up this research - allow other, non-Microsoft intellectuals comment on their research. Yes, this would mean releasing ideas Microsoft could capitalize on in the future, but they don't seem to be doing it anyway, so why not benefit everyone?

    - Shaheen
  • could you detect heart rate, or whether someone is lying? those would have excellent UI uses (particularly in the pornsoft industry :)

    how about minute differences between people to determine who is using the computer?
  • A device that attaches to my glasses (sorry you 20/20 people) that pinpoints my mouse position and then responds to a clenching of the teath for a mouse click. Oh what the damage a sneeze could do.

  • I'm really stooping to a new low by actually responding to this drivel, however here goes. Not everyone has the talent to code every last little thing they want implemented. He's talking about a wide sweeping change in the way mouse support is implemented in X. This is just not possible. I'd like to see you write it. All of the zealots say that if you want it do it yourself. Not everyone who uses linux is a coder/hacker. Just because some are, has no relevance to whether they ALL are. Brush up on your freshman logic class sparky.

  • I do say... I can see in the near future:

    FIRST EVER WEB SERVER RUN ON A MOUSE!!!

    (coming soon)
  • Well...if it is possible to tell WHERE the mouse is being touched instead of if it is, as a whole, being touched...no more mouse buttons needed, perhaps not even a scroll wheel. Fewer pieces to get crudded up in the middle of that Quake match :) Or imagine if you could actually map buttons to any point on the top/front of the mouse. Hell, imagine a keyboard that could do this. We'd have interfaces that could be remapped on the fly, kinda like in Star Trek TNG. - evilWurst, an idle dreamer

  • Re:Microsoft (Score:3)

    by DBMandrake ( 86543 ) on Monday October 25, 1999 @08:00PM (#1588079)
    Yes and no.

    Optical mice have been out for a *long* time. I used one on a Mac Plus years ago, I have a Mouse Systems Optical mouse on my PC now, that I've had for over a year.

    The Microsoft one, although optical, works on a different principle to most optical mice, and because of that, it can be called "new".

    A conventional optical mouse has a pair of light emiting diodes of different colours, which point at a special mouse pad which has a pattern on it.
    In the early days it was a crosshatch pattern where the horizontal and vertical lines were different colours, so one diode picked up the vertical movement, and the other the horizontal. The lines were quite large and obvious, and the resolution wasnt that high.

    Later ones like my Mouse systems one have a grid of tiny silver dots on a dark grey background, and the pad is aluminium. The problem with that is that although its very accurate, you really have to look after the pad. Drop it, bend it, scratch it, and you're in trouble.

    As well as that, the mouse has felt pads for feet, not the conentional teflon feet (which would scratch the surface) so what tends to happen is sweat builds up on the pad, soaks into the feet and prevents the mouse from sliding smoothly :(

    Needless to say the mouse wont work on anything but its proper pad.

    The Microsoft one on the other hand essentially has a small CCD camera in the bottom, (and an led for illumination) which takes pictures of the surface 1500 times a second, and uses a DSP processor to correlate the pictures and determine direction and speed of movement.

    Because of this it will work on nearly any surface, (excluding things like mirrors etc) because most surfaces are grainy when you look at them closely. For me it combines the best of both worlds - optical precision, but with the ability to use most types of mouse pads or surfaces..

  • Speak for yourself...

    When most people touch the mouse, they can't help but move it. What's keeping the applications of today from having toolbars fade away after an input timeout and come back as soon as the mouse is moved slightly (in most cases, that would be when it's touched).

    That's why those of us who require accuracy and efficiency use a trackball, which does not move when you put your hand on it or press one of the buttons.

    As to

    moreover, I stuggle to think of even one piece of real functionality that this mouse would enable, that cannot be done today.

    Well, certainly, there is nothing that could not be done with an existing pointing device -- a simple way to emulate it would be to move the pointer to the corner and have that event trigger the effects.

    Similarly, when my father first became a CPA, he did tax returns and audits by hand on paper. When the technology became available, he switched to a computer. Improving efficiency is what technology is all about.

  • I remember seeing someone from the uni im at now demonstrating a prototype of a mouse that actually give the user a differing strength of electric shock as they moved the mouse accross a map.

    It was meant to show another element of the map (population density or something i think) that if represented on the screen would make it too cluttered.

    When he asked if anyone wanted to try it out, people were not too keen for some reason..

    He also had a vibrating mouse based on the same idea.

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