3 ms·

Perhaps it's because it's late and I'm tired and a bit grumpy, but I can't see the benefit at all here. Only downsides. 1. The whole idea of teaching a user to

Perhaps it's because it's late and I'm tired and a bit grumpy, but I can't see the benefit at all here. Only downsides. 1. The whole idea of teaching a user to accept another programme pretending to be the one they're running, and intercepting all inputs for that I find dangerous. 2. The bubble cursor would be annoying and frustrating, far more often that it would be useful. Have another look at that video, and see just how far the mouse is, often, from the target it's selecting. Especially when it's sometimes over the text of another question. What about cases where you don't want to click anything, you just want to bring that window to the front, or remove focus from the flash video so you can press space to scroll (not pause)? 3. The slowing of the cursor over controls looks the most useful, but would make navigation of your application interface like playing one of those games where your character keeps getting stuck in puddles of honey carelessly left lying about, and slowing dramatically. It'd turn moving your cursor into a game of dodge the gravity wells. Now picture your Mum accidentally moving her mouse into the centre of those six rows of toolbars she has in IE. She'll never be able to get it out again

yangyang 17y ago
I think some Logitech mice used to have haptic feedback, which would vibrate the mouse slighly as you moved over buttons etc. I haven't tried it but always thought that was a much better mechanism for "feeling" buttons and other UI elements that slowing the cursor.
Qz 17y ago
2. The example is a conceptual example, the points you raise can be fixed relatively easily. You can enable deadspace by requiring the mouse to be at least X pixels from a potential target. 3. You could simply turn off sticky controls when the mouse is moving quickly. Target acquisition generally has 2 phases, I high speed movement followed by a deceleration phase near the target. Just enable the sticky controls once the mouse speed drops below the appropriate threshold value.

yangyang 17y ago

I think some Logitech mice used to have haptic feedback, which would vibrate the mouse slighly as you moved over buttons etc. I haven't tried it but always thought that was a much better mechanism for "feeling" buttons and other UI elements that slowing the cursor.

Qz 17y ago

2. The example is a conceptual example, the points you raise can be fixed relatively easily. You can enable deadspace by requiring the mouse to be at least X pixels from a potential target. 3. You could simply turn off sticky controls when the mouse is moving quickly. Target acquisition generally has 2 phases, I high speed movement followed by a deceleration phase near the target. Just enable the sticky controls once the mouse speed drops below the appropriate threshold value.