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Software Linux

Gestures For The Linux Desktop 175

Posted by timothy from the what-about-rude-gestures dept.
geoffsmith writes "Just stumbled upon a gesture system for the linux desktop called 'wayV'. It works similarly to Mozilla gestures, except at windowing system level. For example, hold down the middle mouse button and draw an 'N' and netscape pops up, or draw a slash through a window and it kills the window's process. There are .debs available and the author is currently porting it to win32."
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Gestures For The Linux Desktop More

Gestures For The Linux Desktop

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  • obscene (Score:5, Funny)

    by gripdamage ( 529664 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:06AM (#5313458)
    I guess I thought this software always came with my distribution. I've been making a certain gesture at the Linux desktop for some time with no effect.

  • Whatever happened to Popmouse for Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Katravax ( 21568 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:10AM (#5313468)
    A couple years ago there was a similar app for Windows called Popmouse. I cannnot find it now. Does anyone know what became of that software, or Pointix, the company that made it?

    • Download it here (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://download.com.com/3001-2344-891022.html

    • StrokeIt (Score:5, Informative)

      by eddy ( 18759 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:18AM (#5313489) Homepage Journal

      No idea, but StrokeIt [tcbmi.com] sounds similar.

      Personally I feel the only gestures worth bothering with is the hold-mousebutton-click-other for navigating back/forward.

      • Re:StrokeIt (Score:3, Interesting)

        by moonbender ( 547943 )
        Personally I feel the only gestures worth bothering with is the hold-mousebutton-click-other for navigating back/forward.
        That'd be Opera? Or has this been implemented in Mozilla meanwhile?

        In any case, I use that gesture all the time, too. However, I also make very heavy use of "open in new window/duplicate", "reload", "new blank window". So I think mouse gestures are pretty damn sweet. On the other hand, I've never used them outside of a browser environment.

        • Re:StrokeIt (Score:3, Insightful)

          by eddy ( 18759 )

          Yes, like in Opera.

          The reason I see those as the most useful is because you typically do them while "off keyboard". If I open a new window it's very likely that I'm going to have to type something into it anyway, so opening the window using a guesture instead of pressing ctrl+n isn't a big win if you measure in "minimizing movement" which seems to be my optimization critera.

          A case can be made for other functions in the same way -- reload certainly is "off keyboard", but I still hit F5 or click the reload-button, probably becase I'm so very used to it in conjunction with the relative rareness of that operation (as compared to navigation)

          • That's true. If I open a window using the mouse gesture, I usually select a bookmark subsequently, on the other hand, if I open a window to enter an URL manually, then I'll use ctrl+n to open the window, as well.
        • I'm constantly using it outside of Opera.

          It'll be nice to have a utility that will actually make it work, rather than my forgetting that Opera (and Mozilla) is the only application "modern" enough to include gestures.

      • Re:StrokeIt (Score:2, Interesting)

        by LilGuy ( 150110 )
        StrokeIt is awesome. I've been using it since the last time I read a story about mouse gesturing on /. It works great! It saves me lots of time searching for the X or the -, and I can open my favorite webpages or programs with the flick of a wrist.
        Not to mention girls dig drawing all over the screen with it. ;)

    • stroke it (Score:2, Interesting)

      by p00ya ( 579445 )
      Have a look at strokeit [tcbmi.com]

      Fairly customizeable, and neat for a while, but eventually I decided that I could do everything more efficiently directly from emacs :p
    • You could take a look at Sensiva [sensiva.com]. It has been around for years, and could even record actions as a macro and assign it to a custom gesture.

  • In related news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:10AM (#5313470)
    No word yet on what gestures the Linux port of "Leisure Suit Larry" will support.

  • Pointless (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:12AM (#5313475)
    Thats utterly freakin stupid It takes longer to draw an "N" than it does to click the freakin icon, not to mention that there's probably hundreds of apps that start with the letter "N".

    The "mouse gestures" idea is pointless.

    • Re:Pointless (Score:3, Informative)

      by moonbender ( 547943 )
      Not true: to click on an icon, the cursor has to be at a specific point on the GUI; furthermore the icon has to be visible, eg it must not be covered by a window.
      (And yes, I am aware the parent was troll more than anything, but it's on-topic, and I'm sure some people could think the same without being malevolent.)
      • It's even faster to typ a N on your keyboard. Or mod+n or whatever... May be fun to try for a day or two, but stupid indeed.
        • It's faster to type mod+n on the keyboard IF you have one hand on the keyboard. I don't have one hand on the keyboard at all times, I do have one hand on the mouse at nearly all times (with the exception of those times, like now, when I am typing). This is especially true for surfing: the mouse is obligatory for surfing, the keyboard is only optional. (Links/lynx users in the back rows, quiet down, please.) If I'm holding a cup of coffee in my left hand, having to type mod+n is annoying, indeed, while moving the mouse up down up is effortless.

          (Sidenote: mentioning mouse gestures always brings up scores of people pointing out an awarding use of the now-freed hand. But holding a cup of coffee or a phone or whatever is an option, as well.)
          • Well, that is true. I guess it's a matter of taste. If you're a mouse-user, I can understand it's a good thing to be able to emulate a keyboard with your mouse. But as a keyboard-user it's utterly pointless. Mozillas typeahead is, on the other side, a good reason for me, and probably for many other keyboard-huggers, to trash the mouse ;)

            So imho typeahead is a bigger "breakthrough" then guestures.

            • Re:by the time... (Score:1, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward
              You sound like you're only considering what's good for the present. Sure, with current technology, typeahead seems more usefull. And today, I would certainly choose the keyboard over the mouse.

              But what about in the next 20 years? By then I hope we're using some combination of voice and hand gestures , or something even beter.
          • ... but mouse surfers can get all the same functionality that gestures usually provide for a browser with a right click menu or a context menu. Unless of course your mouse fingers are also holding a cup of coffee (which I have had be the case.) If you're doing that, though, you should seriously consider your mouse's safety... what if you were to spill coffee on it and it were damaged? Then you would be back to the old keyboard... the horrors!
    • mouse gestures are a bad idea, Mice are crap interface devices, ever tried drawing with a mouse, it''s like getting my brother to do the washing up.

      Now with a graphics tablet as a interface device, gestures are easy(accurate) and fast.
      • Ever tried playing a first person shooter with a graphics tablet? Mouses are quite acceptable input devices, and in many ways operate far more effectively than any kind of tablet-based input device. If you want to draw, get a tablet, but don't slam mouses just because they're hopeless for doing something they were never designed to do.
    • I used Sensiva [sensiva.com] for a while, and it worked well with the graphics tablet I have. But I found since upgrading my system and being able to have both mouse and tablet plugged in at the same time it is just as easy to swap to the mouse to do things that I could do with a gesture. It was good for things like back and forward in browsers, and you could customize it do more elaborate things which was somewhat useful.
    • This whole thing is clearly a practical demonstration to inveterate mouse users of the kind of crap you put touch typists through when we say things like," But I don't care if it *is* a billionth of a second faster to use the mouse. I don't *want* to take my fingers off home base."

      KFG
    • I concur it must be kinda useless for a desktop/notebook,
      but it is pretty cool software for a touchscreen environment
      like Opie. So don't dismiss it so fast, dude.

      cheers
    • What icon? The one behind the window I'm working on? That icon?

  • apt-get install from Debian (Score:4, Informative)

    by CAPSLOCK2000 ( 27149 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:14AM (#5313479) Homepage
    This software is allready in Debian, so all you Debian heads, save the author's website, and install with:
    # apt-get install wayv

    (well, actually sudo aptitude install wayv for me, but that's beside the point)

  • Oh puhleeze. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:14AM (#5313481) Journal
    People think "gestures" are the best thing since powdered milk. I don't. I'm not a believer. Heck, I'm a keyboard using heretic. I loove KDE because everything can be assigned to a hotkey.

    To me, gestures is a violation of POLA (Principle of least astonishment). When gestures are on in Opera, they get in the way, because I sometimes 'randomly' select text when I browse/read (it helps me read faster, dunno why).

    So make me a believer. Tell me _why_ gesturing (as the scourge that it is to me) should haunt me even on my desktop?

    No, I'm not trolling, I'm generally curious about why people think this RSI inducing "input method" is useful, and why I should use it instead of my well-optimized keyboard shortcut scheme.

    • Re:Oh puhleeze. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Katravax ( 21568 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:21AM (#5313494)
      Liar. You're just trying to sound like a keyboard snob. Opera gestures don't happen by themselves -- you have to hold the right mouse button down. I also highlight text to break pages apart to make them easier to read, and I have never accidentally kicked off an Opera gesture, and Opera is my primary browser. In addition, you can turn the gestures off. There is no way for gestures in Opera to "get in the way".
    • Because you installed them? If you don't like it, don't use it.

      Personaly, I'd rather use vi style (map commands to keys), But mouse gestures beat the hell out of popup menus. Once you get used to them its hard to back to actually paying attention where the cursor is in relation to toolbar.

      Also, selecting text dosnt effect it. Most mouse gestures use mouse2, or can be configured to. I like to highlight text to mark place if im going afk for a sec, or to invert color on badly made pages, and it never bothered me.
      • Nah, I once installed it to see what the fuss is about. After 5 minutes I deemed it unworkable and went back to keyboard shortcuts and mousing.

        It's perfect that way, with my left hand I can cut, paste, kill windows, minimize/maximize/close windows, select windows and pop up menu's and with my right hand I can use my mouse with the mouse wheel to scroll. read and select text.

        To the people who say it isn't possible to kick off a gesture event accidentally: It happened to me a couple of times. I don't know the exact circumstances (or what the fuck I did), but it was triggered nonetheless.

        Still no solid arguments as to why mouse gesturing is the way to go. I'll stick to my keyboard hotkey setup and mouse, thanks.

    • Did you ever play "Black & White [ea.com]". It had gestures and once you got used to them they were pretty cool. You would use your mouse to draw the gesture on any surface, and if the game engine successfully recognized it a bright white light would illuminate the path of your mouse (as well as implementing the selected command of course); usually this announced that you (being God in the game) are about to perform a miracle. There was a definite learning curve to using them, but once you got it it was genuinely useful and allowed the game to have almost no interface cluttering the screen. Though it isn't any where near the top of my list of favorite games, the gampeplay was unmistakably innovative.

      • B&W (Score:2)

        by cioxx ( 456323 )
        whoa.

        No wonder I totally wrecked my island. I didn't take time to pay attention to such small details. The damn cow wouldn't grow, it kept whining all the time and demanding food. Then that Godzilla character came in, there was this bunny who struck the frikkin cow with lightning.. and all hell broke lose. I remember drowning couple of people, and after that a tornado sucked me in... at that point, I just gave up on it and uninstalled it.

        I didn't bother with Creature Isle Explansion, because I absolutely suck at that game.

        Maybe I should re-install it sometime and give it another shot. I spent well over $60 bucks on both B&W and CI expansion.
      • I think the opposite, I played B&W for quite a while and the gestures were just a pain in the ***. If they could have had keyboard shortcuts instead.. it would have been much easier.
    • I too select text while I browse in order to read faster! I'm surprised to hear that other people do that as well.

      I do really love gestures though. I use them in opera and mozilla. I used to be a full time keyboard user, but ever since gestures came out (and my 5 button programmable mouse) I can do all of my most critical functions with the mouse.

      I can only imagine if my system accepted TWO independent mice! haha
      • I too select text while reading, easier to keep track of where you are and if you have to switch to another program you know where you were when you go back to the browser.

        Genius :)

      • Voilà... 2 mice! (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I actually do this. It is possible with X 4.
        Just edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 like this... ... here's the first snippet (put it where your mouse config already is):

        Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Mouse1"
        Driver "mouse"
        Option "Protocol" "IntelliMouse"
        # It's a wheel mouse
        Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
        # serial
        Option "Resolution" "520"
        Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        # Needed for the wheel to work
        Option "SendCoreEvents"
        # Important! That makes this mouse a "main" one.
        EndSection

        Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "Mouse2"
        Driver "mouse"
        Option "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
        # This is the config for a five-button mouse.
        # It was originally for a trackball, which
        # turned to be low-quality
        # (but it was way cheap).
        # I use it now with a normal 2-button+wheel
        # mini-mouse. It is left this way so that
        # I can go back to the trackball if I want...
        Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
        # It's a PS/2 mouse but it should work ok
        # with a serial in /dev/ttyS1
        # Option "EmulateWheel" "On"
        # Option "EmulateWheelButton" "6"
        # Unneeded options
        Option "EmulateWheelInertia" "0"
        # Hmmm, forgot to try how this works.
        # Maybe I'll tweak it next...
        Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        # Ye olde wheel-translating config
        Option "HistorySize" "1000"
        # Can't remember what this does. Seems
        # to record the last mouse movements.
        Option "Resolution" "450"
        Option "SendDragEvents" "On"
        # Ooh. So many options, so little time.
        Option "SendCoreEvents"
        # This mouse is a "main" one, too.
        Option "Buttons" "7"
        # This makes the trackball work. It has
        # five buttons plus a wheel which
        # gives 2 more.
        EndSection ... and so it ends, the first snippet: ... now, the second snippet (at the end of the config file):

        # This is were you describe your system with the
        # components you gave previously in the
        # config file.

        Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "layout1"
        InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice "Mouse2" "CorePointer"
        # Just one of them can be the "Corepointer"
        InputDevice "Mouse1"
        Screen "screen1"
        EndSection ... and this is the end of second snippet.

        Voilà! Two mice working at the same time! Someone with small hands here couldn't use the same mouse I do...

        Now, come to think, maybe I opened Pandora's box.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yep, I know about fluxbox. It is nice, but still, I want eyecandy. So KDE it is :)

        Also, ion is also pretty nice if you're in a minimalist mood. It also has tabbing and is fully controllable by the keyboard. It is way cool.

    • I think that gestures with a single input are somewhat clumsy. Things like mouse gestures are the first step of a baby walking. We need input devices that track multiple inputs [fingerworks.com] and hopefully, in the future, devices that track multiple inputs in 3 dimensions to really bring gesture control to maturity.
    • I don't see the point in making you "a beleiver." As long as people love and use mouse gestures, there's a market for it. Nobody forces you to make use of them (-8

      Opera's mouse gestures are really great. I open a link in the background as a new window by holding mouse2, and move my mouse down and up. I close a window by drawing and L (still with mouse2 pressed). I can open new, blank windows, reload and then some. Some of these gestures are performed just as fast with a keyboard, but not all (like the link-clicking stuff). As the mouse is the primary input device for web-surfing, it's nice to find more use for it than just clicking. Oh - I almost forgot the one I use the most. Back and forth in history can be accomplished by pressing mouse1 (for forward) or mouse2 (for backward) and press the opposite button.

      I use KDE as well - my shortcut theme is quite useful and effective. The mouse gestures are a nice addition.
    • The main reason is to provide the quickest access to certain features. I too am a keyboard shortcut junkie. However, a lot of the time when I'm just surfing the internet or something, I don't have any hands on the keyboard (don't get any ideas). I don't want to put my hands on the keyboard to access a program or something. So the whole idea is to have the fastest access no matter what the situation.

    • When gestures are on in Opera, they get in the way, because I sometimes 'randomly' select text when I browse/read
      Press Alt+P, go to Accessibility and uncheck Left-handed back and forward gestures. You should be right now.

      Also,check out Help -> Mouse for more mouse gestures. Once you get the hang of it, they are indispensable.
  • So does Mozilla flip you the bird when you type http://www.microsoft.com/ie?

  • StrokeIt. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by albino eatpod ( 242140 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:15AM (#5313484) Homepage
    There's already a pretty good mouse gesture program out for Windows called StrokeIt [tcbmi.com]. I tried using it for a while, but it's really not worth it unless you have an optical mouse IME - a balled mouse ended up screwing up the gestures something chronic. Since I got my Logitech optical, it's a bit more usable, but I do wonder how much more efficient it is. To close a window, you have to draw a Q, and in the same time you've done it you could have just clicked the X.

    I use the gestures in Phoenix though, moving back and forth between pages is a breeze now though - I really wouldn't recommend it for a full windows system though.

    • Re:StrokeIt. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you can set any gesture, pre-known or ones you "teach" to it, to do virtually anything with strokeit.
      highly configurable and customizable.

      mine has close window set to C - which is freakin fast and easy to draw. faster than closing out the normal way by far.
      examples:
      close - c
      maximize - foward slash
      minimize - reverse foward slash
      refresh - r
      back - left
      next - right
      top of the page - up
      email - E
      etc..

      and even bookmarks. i could set slashdot to S.. simple.

      this thing is a must for me while mousing with one hand.

  • gestures standards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vistic ( 556838 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:15AM (#5313485)
    I really hope that the gestures they use are the same as Mozilla's. I use the gestures a lot, and if I'm ever forced to use IE, I find myself gesturing to no avail.

    However, I recently tried using Opera which also has gestures capability. The problem I had is that a lot of the gestures are different than Mozilla's gestures, causing me to do Mozilla gestures out of habit without effect (or the wrong effect) inside Opera.

    On an operating system level this could be problematic. What if I absent-mindedly do a Mozilla gesture, but in this operating system's gestures, it causes me to lose my work before it was saved? Or some such similar disaster.

    Already I know I would have problems with the closing windows by drawing a slash through it. In Mozilla and Opera, you close it by gesturing L, R, L.

    Probably the best way to avoid all these gestures getting confused with each other ("now let's see, was that for Opera? Mozilla? or the operating system?") is to develop some sort of gesturing standard that's generally agreed upon as intuitive that we all can remember and use.

    Also, what if I have Mozilla installed on a system that also has an operating system gestures program installed? Which gesture takes priority when the same thing means two different things to two different programs that are monitoring the mouse at the same time?
    • The Mozilla gestures are similar to the Opera ones, because they were copied from Opera. Likewise the Black and White gesture for deselecting the current tool was the same as the Opera one for close current window. I think the Mozilla system includes some more, but I haven't used it since it is not installed by default, and it's bloated enough without downloading anything else. I agree that a standard for gestures would be a nice idea, and it's feasible (after all, meta+c copies to clipboard on almost all platforms I've used), but I suspect it will be a while before such a standard exists.
    • "Probably the best way to avoid all these gestures getting confused with each other ("now let's see, was that for Opera? Mozilla? or the operating system?") is to develop some sort of gesturing standard that's generally agreed upon as intuitive that we all can remember and use."

      I'll probably be modded troll or flamebait for this, but how would you ever try to get a large group of linux users/programmers to agree on what is 'intuitive' or 'user friendly'? not to mention how it should be implemented (window or or level...)

      Int
    • I've got kind of the same problem. I use EMACS a lot, and sometimes I try and use Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N to scroll the screen up and down when I'm web browsing. Then I have to kill off the print dialog box.

      You're right about coming up with some sort of gesturing standards. It will be necessary if they're ever going to become popular. As to your second question (which gesture system gets priority?) I'm guessing that a good standard would address that as well.
    • It shouldn't be that hard - I mean, your average shockwave game maps keyboard keys, so why cant software developers make mappable gestures? Just have a list of all the possible gestures and all the possible actions, then let the user associate them. That instantly kills all the bureaucratic overhead and ultimately makes all software more customizable for the end user. Seems like a no-brainer to me...
    • If the close for the OS was the same as opera, how would you distinguish between wanting to close the current Opera/Mozilla tab and closing the entire program?

      Unless of course you use a different button for the OS compared to Opera/Mozilla.

  • FVWM (Score:5, Informative)

    by James Lanfear ( 34124 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:16AM (#5313486)
    FVWM [fvwm.org] has supported gestures through LibStoke [etla.net] (apparently what wayV uses as well) for quite some time.
    • Except for whatever reason, they call them 'strokes'... But I love that you get to program them yourself. It doesn't have to be hard to open a browser or whatever. Mine are all straight lines - I don't use that many different apps that I can't just call up a terminal and go from there...

      Shrink all your borders to 1 pixel, then it's just a SMOP and you've got your power user sooper desktop.

      I bind all the meta keys to window ops, so you can move windows around with a CTRL-click from anywhere. Heaven.

  • Ratpoison (Score:5, Funny)

    by leoboiko ( 462141 ) <leoboiko@gmail . c om> on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:21AM (#5313495) Homepage
    I use ratpoison. The only gesture I do is to the mouse, not with the mouse.

  • I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rampant mac ( 561036 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:25AM (#5313506)
    There are .debs available and the author is currently porting it to win32.

    Wonder what gesture he'll use for control-alt-delete?

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Windows already have gestures for control-alt-delete.

      Move your mouse-cursor to the IE icon and click.

      At least that was the case when I lasted used windows, win95/98.
  • So what happens if you gesture a dollar sign?

    Will it format and install Windows

  • Useful? (Score:3, Informative)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <blakesley&gmail,com> on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:27AM (#5313512)
    Although this is quite an interesting (and even humorous) idea I doubt if it will be used by many Linux users (unless it is quite simple with a few mouse gestures which are easy to make but not easy to make by mistake). I'm sure some people will like it, but, as has already been pointed out, it is probably quicker clicking the icon. Even if it does speed things up a bit, one has to learn all those gestures and make sure one does not make any by accident.

    When I had mouse gestures enabled in my browsers (Mozilla, Opera and Phoenix), I found myself making them by accident and closing the window or something. Maybe they should make them customisable (choose your own gestures - that would be cool and people probably have their own personal gestures they find it is easier/harder for them to make ;-) ) and also make it so one can choose which indivdual gestures you want installed (i.e.: not the kill the app one if your fingers slip sometimes).

    If that was done they might be more useful and mainstream (and, maybe, used in many apps and OS's), but still I (like many others, probably) just couldn't be bothered learning all the damn things and they seemed like more pain than they were worth - I know how to user my browser/OS quickly and well by pointing and clicking or by the keyboard, and I do not really need a third harder-to-learn that is of questionable value and unlikely to speed up my browsing or OS use.

    • Re:Useful? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by psavo ( 162634 )
      Only because you can't handle your mouse right doesn't mean that nobody else couldn't too. I for one find mouse gestures an extremely useful thing to have. As I use mouse for clicking on links and whatnot, it never gets in the way.
      Before I learned mouse gestures (they got enabled accidentally) I did manage to do some things (close windows, bring new ones..) by accident. After I learned what moves do what, I haven't have any problems. Only that mozilla's version of mousegestures sucks ass.

      Afaik only people who bitch about mg's are those who never understood how to use them, exactly the same thing as with i9 text input system.

      • My post (the grandparent) may've sounded a tad condescending and like I was putting down MG's. This was not my intention. I'm sure many people find them useful, but I do think there are ways in which they could be improved.

        It may even sound mundane or even suitish. I am as geeky as the next /.er and like trying out new features like MG's. I did this for a while but in the end I decided that (in their current form (in Mozilla and Opera)) they were more trouble than they were worth (and to some extent, I did not have the time to work out how to use them properly and, also, not make them accidentally).

        If I found I could not be bothered then I cannot see that Joe Random is going to be (i.e.: MG's - at least as they stand - are not going to become mainstream). However, this does not mean it is a useless technology or that the Linux project is useless, by any means, and I'm sure MG's will find a niche user base (and possibly niche applications).

        I think that this project should be supported as, undoubtedly, some people will find it helpful. I may even start using MG's a lot one day (if they improved or if I can be bothered learning/using them).

    • Re:Useful? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jack Zombie ( 637548 )
      Maybe they should make them customisable (choose your own gestures - that would be cool and people probably have their own personal gestures they find it is easier/harder for them to make ;-) ) and also make it so one can choose which individual gestures you want installed (i.e.: not the kill the app one if your fingers slip sometimes).

      Actually, you can customize and choose which individual mouse gestures you want to use in Phoenix/Mozilla with the Optimoz Mouse Gestures Extension [mozdev.org]. All you need to do is go to the directory where you installed Phoenix/Mozilla (for example, C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla), then navigate into chrome\mozgest\content\ and open the gestimp.js file (so, following the previous example, it would be C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\chrome\mozgest\content\g estimp.js). Now, edit whats in function initGestureTable() -- for example, edit
      addGesture("L", "g.BrowserBack", "BrowserBack();");
      to
      addGesture("LUDR", "g.BrowserBack", "BrowserBack();");
      in order to change from performing a "Left" gesture to go back one page to "Left, Up, Down, Right". You can also delete the gestures you dislike this way. Its archaic and troublesome, I know, but it works.

      Personally, I only use the "Left" for Back, "Right" for Forward, "Up" for Stop, "Down" for New Tab, and "Down, Right" for Close Tab. All the rest is bloat that gets in the way, for me at least.
  • so... what happens when you draw a smiley?

  • Fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:33AM (#5313525) Homepage Journal
    This is a good thing. One of the things I think today's desktop (not just linux, mind you) needs most is for the user to be able to interact more at the level of the desktop environment/window system rather than with applications alone. For instance, one of the things I liked best about sawfish was the endless amount of keyboard interaction it allowed. I could configure shortcuts for all sorts of window operations, and stuff like SHIFT+pull with mouse for resizing a window. Heck, I even used to change the volume with sawfish (map a keysroke to the commands aumix -v +5 and aumix -v -5).

    Conversely, I'm disappointed that gnome2 in its effort to make it appeal to windows users has dumbed things down a lot. After all, once you get users to try out the linux desktop, how do you keep them? By making the desktop more powerful, of course.

    I'm looking forward to seeing this get adopted widely. Eventually, I want there to be an entire layer that looks at your both keystrokes and your mouse movements before passing it on to the application. That way, handwriting recognition would work for all applications (wayV does this somewhat). Also, I could define app-independent "macros". For instance, I could set up some mouse gesture to translate into typing, say, my name or the URL of my home page.

  • Gestures for BeOS and MacOS X (Score:5, Informative)

    by stew77 ( 412272 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:35AM (#5313532)
    I wrote something similar for BeOS - it's called FourWays [keindesign.de]. Now the trick is that all BeOS applications use BMessages for communications, and that in conjunction with SpiceyKeys, you can use gestures to control any BeOS application.

    Also, theres Cocoa Gestures [bitart.com] for MacOS X.

  • Tech support...! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16, 2003 @09:36AM (#5313533)
    Blimey, it's hard enough training new users to use a mouse. We've all been there:

    "No, clicking twice isn't the same as a double click"

    "No, you shouldn't move the mouse between the two clicks of a double-click"

    etc etc ad nauseum.

    Gestures are going to make this even more of a pain...
  • ...would bring up your favorite website
  • Yeah, gestures worked great in Black and White. Why, exactly should I do something as inane as a gesture when a mouse click will do the trick? Total waste of energy.

    "Oooh look at me. I'm opening my web browser with a Big N."

    Derek

  • Black & White (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Orcspit ( 600792 )
    PC game came out about 2 years ago called Black and White, the main way to cast spells in this game was through gestures. By about the second island I would have killed for icons or something to click. Many times I would be trying to create a rain spell to stop my village from being on fire, all along repeatedly failing the casting because I couldn't get the stupid gesture just right. So I'll pass on gestures for anything else.
  • The end user then makes a gesture with the mouse resulting in a pattern appearing on the screen.

    In Soviet Union, computer gesture at you.

  • Netscape (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 )
    draw an 'N' and netscape pops up

    People still use Netscape on Linux??

    Arh the Horror!

  • Can you say accessibility (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    To all the idiots saying 'this is totally pointless, waste of time' - think about accessibility for a second.

    You do realise that there are some people whose only interface with a computer is a head controlled pointer, right?

    I hope that the gnome accesibility people consider adopting something like this for gnome2, providing 'gesture-binding' for the desktop.
  • I guess I have this installed cause every once in a while browser windows open (or die) It occured to me there should be one to update errata so even idiots can patch themselvs.
  • A simple request, but I want the fire effects you got when you pulled off a gesture in Black and White. All of these apps are good, they work and they do their thing, but I often found myself doing gestures in the game for the *click* *poof* *pretty fire effects*, made them that little bit more magical.

  • How many people use gestures (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jd142 ( 129673 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:03AM (#5313598) Homepage
    It sounds really cool and all, and I've tried it out it Opera, but I always find myself back on the keyboard. Yeah, I hated Black and White, too.

    YMMV obviously, but when I'm at the computer, I'm normally using both hands to type and taking them off the keyboard to perform a fairly precise action with the mouse is a pita.

    Icons are actually fairly forgiving. You usually have around a 32x32 area of screen to hit your target. It seems like if you vary more than that in the gestures, then the gesture fails. And since you can increase your icon size, you can increase the allowable area for the doubleclick.

    And as others point out, in both windows and linux you can easily make key combinations to launch an app. Although I find myself using both os's autocomplete function in the run command. Type in a command once, then it's a simple win+r or alt+f2 to bring up the run box and type the first letter or two of the app's name to run it. Much faster for me than taking my hands off the keyboard, moving to the mouse and making a gesture.

    • Enabling mouse gestures never disables the keyboard. If you have both hands on the keyboard typing, you are in position to use the keyboard to navigate, not the mouse. On the other hand, if you are using the mouse (say, to click links in your web browser or filesystem browser), your hand is in ideal position to use a mouse gesture to pop back to the previous page if you click the wrong link.

      Ultimately, neither mouse gestures nor keyboard shortcuts should be removed just because the other has the same functionality -- they should be redundant systems, that share functionality. They should not complement each other.

  • Gesture (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Whitez ( 650857 )
    There's already a gesture recognition program for Win32. Gesture [sf.net]
    It's at an early stage at the moment, but shows potential.

  • Repetitive stress? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:23AM (#5313685) Journal
    I've never used gestures, so I don't know if this is true or not, but I think I remember reading somewhere that gestures tend to exacerbate repetitive stress problems.

    Is that true? Or is it just an urban legend?
    • That's probably an urban legend... I don't see why it would be worse than any other mouse use. It's just as repetitive to move your mouse from a home position to the back button as it is to move your mouse from right to left on the webpage.

  • People with disabilities (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alofron ( 314332 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:21AM (#5313859)
    I've come across software like that in the Windows platform for years, yet I failed to understand how it would improve my everyday interaction with my PC. Of course some people like it and lets face it : it is quite impressive, even 'trendy'. So people will play with it for a few hours and then pretty much forget about it (I know I have). A minority may even continue to use such a system on a regular basis but not me (or anybody I know of for that matter ...).

    Yet, for all its 'useless-ness', pointing device based gestures and similar technologies can be of importance for a particular sect of the 'computer users' population : People with disabilities. (check Google on that, and btw here are a couple of quick links http://knowltonian.net/NJIT/webaccessibility.html, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/pendragon/publication s/programming-overview.html).

    I know that my post is on the verge of being moderated 'offtopic' or even 'flamebait' but the truth is that the FS/OSS community has not come up with any serious technologies to aid/help people with disabilities in their effort for satisfactory interaction with their computer. On the other hand, commercial entities/corporations (yes, like Microsoft but also Adobe, Sun etc.; in fact most of the big corps have dedicated research (or marketing ;) departments) are spending millions on that area. Sure, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they aim for profit. But they do offer a few solutions.

    And yes, I am aware of the accessability options provided by modern FS/OSS desktops. But do you think they are enough when compared to commercial solutions ?

    It is true that people with disabilities is a very small minority in the FS/OSS world (any statistics anyone ?) so it would not seem wise to 'waste' resources on the development of such software (mouse gestures, visual gesture recognition, voice recognition etc.) ... I wonder how many people would agree with that ...

    Why did I post this ?
    A few years ago I had an accident which resulted into several broken fingers. Ever tried to use a keyboard while most of your fingers are broken or cracked ? I tell you, it's a bitch.
    A friend of mine helped me by installing a Gestures kind of software and a trackball in my brand new Win95 (no 'booo' please) box. It didn't solve everything but it did seem to make my interaction easier. My 'torment' only lasted a month or so but since then I often wondered ... what if, just if, something happened and I would not be able to use my fingers anymore ? The Gestures-type-of-application (I just can't remember its name !) proved quite useful at that point. Not an adequate replacement of ones fingers but quite usefull nevertheless. Therefore, everytime I see similar software I feel a little more 'secure' and optimistic; it's silly I know ... Thats all.

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Masa ( 74401 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:21AM (#5313864) Journal
    I don't understand, why gestures are so popular. I tried Mozilla gestures once, but run into problems with them. At first, they seemed to be a great help, but eventually they just started to make my life difficult. For example, when I tried to paint a piece of text by dragging mouse from right to left, the gesture system decided that I wanted to go to the previous page. Well, that's just stupid. And if I remember correctly, it doesn't help to drag mouse from left to right while painting a section, because it assumes that I want to move forward a page. For me, this kind of a system just makes life harder.
    • First of all, gestures do not come with Mozilla builds, and I have yet to see a link, so you can find Mozilla gestures at http://optimoz.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org].

      Now, in reply to your comment, use your left mouse button or middle button--it's in the preferences that way. Or add a modifier key so that you have to hit Ctrl while moving the mouse. I personally use my middle mouse key for all sorts of tab functions (http://multizilla.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]), autoscrolling (http://autoscroll.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]) and for gestures, and have no problem with conflicts.

      • Re:Why? (Score:2)

        by Masa ( 74401 )
        Ah, I wasn't aware of the fact that the mouse button was configurable. And now I have to be a bit more specific. I was actually using those gestures with Phoenix (I think that the package was designed for Mozilla, anyway) and at the time I was testing the gestures package, there was no way to change the configuration of any plug-in functionality.

        So, I admit my ignorance and apologize my inaccurate description of my past situation. My previous comment wasn't meant to be a troll. I was just trying to ask an innocent question about the true meaning and usefulness of the gestures.

        • Ah, I wasn't aware of the fact that the mouse button was configurable. And now I have to be a bit more specific. I was actually using those gestures with Phoenix (I think that the package was designed for Mozilla, anyway) and at the time I was testing the gestures package, there was no way to change the configuration of any plug-in functionality.

          I hate to call this one, but you walked right into it:

          Let's note here you say "I was testing the gestures package" with a browser that isn't even up to version 1.0.

          If you truly want to see how gestures work and interact (and how they are F*cking awesome), try it with a post 1.0 version of Mozilla. Once you begin using them you'll never go back.

  • Gestures on cell phones/pDAs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jeorgen ( 84395 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:21AM (#5313866)
    Maybe gestures could take off on cell phones and PDAs with their cramped space for input devices? Put in a gyro and just gesture away, no need for a keyboard. Would make it even harder though to distinguish between loonies (who walk around talking and gesturing to themselves) and ordinary cell phone users.

    /jeorgen

    • ... have you ever used a PDA? The entire interfaces are driven by pen-based gestures. They don't usually have keyboards, and those that need them for normal operation aren't PDA's anyway, they're mini-laptops with crappy keyboards.

  • Windows gestures... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been gesturing at Windoze for years. The symbols are mostly undocumented because they are unsuitable for children.
  • Black & White had this

    Gesturing is hard

    You can do this with StrokeMe, libstroke, and XYZ (name software here)

    Ha! I've captured all the comments with only 3 lines!

    Seriously though, I think this is wayCool (ducks as piano flies over head, nearly hits. Or did it nearly miss?)
    I loves the black&white gestures (They should make it draw the gesture on the screen with you, a la Black&White)

    I've got nothing more to say to this.

  • I haven't had enough time to play with this, but it seems great. All i've done is map apps to letter gestures (P for Phoenix, etc,) But it can also send key commands. so C could be copy and V paste or so.
  • I love Opera's gestures, but Moz's implementation is buggy as hell, and to get it to use the right mouse button you have to edit the js.prefs file (and that's never worked for me, either, I always get the mousewheel as the gestures button or I have to use both right and left buttons)...and that's just the Windows problems. Linux mozgestures are a headache because of privs...I always have to do a chmod to the whole directory to get the gestures to work, and even then, I have the same problem w/ WHICH mouse button.

    knock opera all you want, but their gestures work with no hassles beyond learning which gesture does what.

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