On 07-04-2015, at 1:37 PM, Chris Muller <ma.chris.m at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 2:07 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On 03-04-2015, at 10:23 AM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The "power of pointing" is a wonderful UI gesture.  It's so energy
>>> efficient for the user.  A simple nudge of the mouse can spawn a lot
>>> of output and, then, simply moving away (one more nudge) reclaims all
>>> the screen space.  Sometimes I like to pop up even /interactive/
>>> panels my Maui apps by merely pointing.
>>> 
>>> What is remarkable to me is how underrated it is.  I guess Windows'
>>> click-for-focus pretty much blew it out of the water..
>>> 
>> Except that it is an unholy pain if your pointing device has any reason to wander on its own; like a stiff cable, a sloping surface, an accidental nudge from a moving hand, a cat, an earthquake, psychokinetic leakage etc. All of which have annoyed me at some time.
> 
> Those are rare events compared to switching focus.  A minimally
> competent input device setup such as a laptop with a trackpad would
> reduce it from rare to never.

But I - like quite a lot of people - don’t use a laptop. Don’t even own one. Meeses are where it’s at, dude! Whatever next - a suggestion to use one of those dreadful Selker Trackpoint monstrosities?

One of the big complexifiers of modern UI design is catering for the reality of so many different ways of interacting with a system. Telling people to use a trackpad just isn’t practical.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Fractured Idiom:- QUE SERA SERF - Life is feudal