Kill the Rodent Instead

If one were to divide the time spent creating a document or otherwise operating the computer into different activites, operating the mouse would probably not score high, as much as we feel we use the mouse.

The mouse is nonetheless a nuisance to those of us who prefer to rest our hands on the keyboard as we type. Having to maneuvering the damn rodent around in order to, say, emphasize a word is perhaps easy on the memory, but it means you have to move your hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, moving the mouse pointer to wherever it must be, marking the word, and then either finding the formatting option in a menu or in a toolbar.

I miss the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, which certainly had its shortcomings, but many of the often-used sequences were quickly built into our "hand memory," and any special mark-ups or changes was a question of pressing the 'F' and number keys in an appropriate order. It was somewhat user hostily for its non-intuitive approach, but mouse pains were unheard of, and using the keyboard was many times faster than today's mouse operations.

Dontclik.it also thinks that clicking around is a nuisance, and proposes a use of the mouse that eliminates the need for clicking. The flash interface on dontclick.it illustrates the concept neatly. The method is a combination of focus-following and mouse gestures.

Focus-following is well-known by seasoned Unix users since the early 1990es, and is a feature provided by the window manager where you simply hover the mouse above a window or entry field where you want your mouse or keyboard focus to be.

Mouse gestures, like focus-following, are also known on the most popular Linux desktops albeit perhaps less used. Mouse gestures is a technique where a certain motion of the mouse corresponds to a certain action. For example, a swift down motion of the mouse followed by an up motion might correspond to minimizing the window. Dontclick.it suggests that instead of clicking a button, you circle around it with the mouse, indicating that you want this button activated.

Unfortunately, the approach doesn't eliminate the mouse. I do mind clicking, but that's a lesser mouse evil. What I really hate about the mouse is having to take my hands off the keyboard, books, og whatever I'm using and use my hand for maneuvering the damn rodent around. Dontclick.it may solve the clicking part of using the mouse, but it still advocates using the mouse, offering no end of carpal tunnel syndromes caused by repetitive mouse usage.

What's worse, replacing a click with a circular movement of the mouse obviously means you can rest your index finger, but at the cost of making a circular movement that requires even more motion of your arm and hand. I'm afraid if this concept were to replace the conventional use of the mouse, pains related to mouse use would increase, and I don't see how the circular movement can somehow be faster or easier on the hand than a simple click.