[RndTbl] Re: [TLUG]: wondering about

Kristofer Coward kris at melon.org
Fri Jun 21 15:02:05 CDT 2002


On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 12:30:51PM -0700, Mel Seder wrote:
> Does anyone know of a user interface that brings the action to where
> your mouse is sitting.  Instead of taking me off to the side somewhere
> and forcing me to move the mouse cursor to the question,  let the
> question come to where my mouse cursor is.  Don't force us users to
> waltz that mouse across our desks all day long.
> 
> That will become a big boost in productivity I think.

After reading some articles about interface design, I started placing
all my mousable items along the top and right hand side of my screen
(I'm right handed) since those are the areas that are easiest to get to
with the flick of my wrist. I find that in order to do this inside
apps, it's often necessary to run the configurator for the associated
library's desktop environment.

On top of that, I set myself up a bunch of hotkeys for frequently used
mouse actions so that I don't have to move my hands off the keyboard
to get what I want (when I'd typing)

One of my nicer setups (that was pretty hardcore command line though)
was just running fvwm, no applets, pager pages selected by the
corresponding Ctrl-Shift-keypad# (as far as I'm concerned this should
be a standard set of hotkeys) focus on mouseover, and each page filled
with xterms of differing dimensions (or some with xterms dedicated to
specific purposes). I also had a page with a browser and another where
xmms had been slipped in, and one left empty for whatever-I-felt-like.
Also, when using the xterms (most of the time) I just kept the mouse in
the centre of the screen so i never had to move the mouse more than a
couple of mm in order to move focus between windows.

Of course, at home, I use GNOME since my gf likes to use my machine
from time to time, doesn't want to have to log in herself, and gets
frustrated/intimidated by endless screens full of xterms.

-- 
Kristofer Coward				http://unripe.melon.org/
GPG Fingerprint: 2BF3 957D 310A FEEC 4733  830E 21A4 05C7 1FEB 12B3



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