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I seem to remember that having a mouse with a context menu click, what is now usually the right button click, was another RiscOS innovation. Acorn ARM machines

by Lio 4y ago

I seem to remember that having a mouse with a context menu click, what is now usually the right button click, was another RiscOS innovation. Acorn ARM machines always came with a three button mouse and I think the context menu was the middle button. I think the third button was used for cancelling things but I can't quite remember. I had a PC with Windows 2 around the same time and it always seemed weird that that the right button on my MS mouse did almost nothing (I think you could use it for column select in Word but that was about it). It was like the hardware and software teams were working separately, which was probably the case. The Macs at the time had only one button and that at least seemed like a deliberate design choice. I wasn't a fan of it but I could see that someone had deliberately decided to make things simple with click, double click and long click on a single button.

lproven 4y ago
You're right about the 3-button mouse. However, this was not an Acorn innovation: several Unix vendors, including Sun, also used 3-button mice, with comparable functions. I'd argue that Acorn's innovation was formalising the functions and providing a rich GUI to use them. 1. The left button is called Select. It does what a left-click does on most OSes: select an item, and so on. It terminates the action: e.g. click Select on a button in a dialog box, it closes the dialog. 2. The middle button is called Menu. It opens a context menu related to what you click on. These are the only menus in RISC OS. There is no menu bar, no hamburger menu, etc., only context menus. Each app's global menu is the context menu. 3. The right button is called Adjust. It changes what it's clicked on without terminating it. E.g. click Adjust on the OK or Save button in a dialog, it applies the changes without closing the dialog. So, no need for an Apply button. Adjust-click a scroll bar and it scrolls in the opposite direction from clicking with Select, so no need for a wheel mouse. Lots of OSes have Select and Menu mice buttons now; nothing else has Adjust. The good things: cleaner GUI (no visible menu bars or buttons, no Apply buttons, no file navigation in file dialogs because you drag and drop to save.) Richer control of that GUI with 1980s mice. (No scroll wheels or anything because they hadn't been invented yet.) The bad things: a steeper learning curve. If it's your first GUI, it's harder to learn. Mouse controls are significantly more complex than GUIs with a 1- or 2-button mouse. But it's more powerful. If you already know a GUI, you have to unlearn stuff, which is harder still. To use the classic computers/cars simile: I do not have a car and don't drive much, but I would describe using a 3-button mouse in RISC OS as being like using a manual transmission. The Mac OS X/Windows model, with 2 buttons, is like using an automatic. It's easier to learn and easier to use, but you sacrifice a large degree of direct control. Scroll wheels are like flappy paddles on an automatic car's steering wheel: they try to restore a bit of control, but they only influence it a bit, you don't actually get the full native control back.

by Lio 4y ago

lproven 4y ago

You're right about the 3-button mouse. However, this was not an Acorn innovation: several Unix vendors, including Sun, also used 3-button mice, with comparable functions. I'd argue that Acorn's innovation was formalising the functions and providing a rich GUI to use them. 1. The left button is called Select. It does what a left-click does on most OSes: select an item, and so on. It terminates the action: e.g. click Select on a button in a dialog box, it closes the dialog. 2. The middle button is called Menu. It opens a context menu related to what you click on. These are the only menus in RISC OS. There is no menu bar, no hamburger menu, etc., only context menus. Each app's global menu is the context menu. 3. The right button is called Adjust. It changes what it's clicked on without terminating it. E.g. click Adjust on the OK or Save button in a dialog, it applies the changes without closing the dialog. So, no need for an Apply button. Adjust-click a scroll bar and it scrolls in the opposite direction from clicking with Select, so no need for a wheel mouse. Lots of OSes have Select and Menu mice buttons now; nothing else has Adjust. The good things: cleaner GUI (no visible menu bars or buttons, no Apply buttons, no file navigation in file dialogs because you drag and drop to save.) Richer control of that GUI with 1980s mice. (No scroll wheels or anything because they hadn't been invented yet.) The bad things: a steeper learning curve. If it's your first GUI, it's harder to learn. Mouse controls are significantly more complex than GUIs with a 1- or 2-button mouse. But it's more powerful. If you already know a GUI, you have to unlearn stuff, which is harder still. To use the classic computers/cars simile: I do not have a car and don't drive much, but I would describe using a 3-button mouse in RISC OS as being like using a manual transmission. The Mac OS X/Windows model, with 2 buttons, is like using an automatic. It's easier to learn and easier to use, but you sacrifice a large degree of direct control. Scroll wheels are like flappy paddles on an automatic car's steering wheel: they try to restore a bit of control, but they only influence it a bit, you don't actually get the full native control back.