Hannes Hirzel wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, John Hinsley wrote:
> 
> > But I'd argue that the colour convention
> >
> > a.    Has history on it's side
> >
> > b.    Is going to be easier to remember than the main/menu/halo convention.
> > (Which already, IIRC, conflicts with VW's "naming convention" which I find a
> > real PITB.)
> >
> > The answer is really simple and completely mechanical: either take 3 pots of
> > paint into class (the stuff we used to paint plastic model planes with is very
> > good for this) or, if your students are messy/in a hurry, a packet of Ben Day
> > Dots purchased for next to nowt from your local stationer.
> 
> I agree with John - we should keep the colours. There are various ways to
> switch the mouse buttons (e.g. in the settings panel of the OS mouse
> driver, there are different mice, in laptops we often rather have a top
> and bottom button; some people are left-handed). So I don't think that it
> is too much burden for the user to find out which button is which and then
> mark them with the colors. This eases writing platform (mouse-device)
> independet tutorials. ...

I tend to agree with Stephen that "first", "second" and "third" (or "primary", "secondary", "meta" or similar) would be a *lot* easier to learn & remember than red/yellow/blue, and would be just as platform-independent.  (And you wouldn't be locked into a specific description such as with "main", "menu", "halo"... although there's something to be said for that.)

I don't think there's any issue with confusing whether the "first" button is the left one on a regular mouse, or the right one on a left-handed mouse.  The only possible confusion comes up for Windows users with 3-button mice who haven't turned on the 3-button mouse mapping, and prefer to have the right button be the menu button.  But in that case it's perfectly reasonable to think of the middle button as the "third" button, since it really is the third button tacked onto a traditional two-button Windows mouse.

On the other hand, red/yellow/blue has its followers and does have history on its side, so I don't really expect that we'll get any agreement on changing the convention. :-)

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com