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10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

10gui.com

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Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#71

Post by roundsquare »

alexitosrv wrote: post #52
andreyf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, OSX has much better thought-out keyboard shortcuts than Windows does. A simple example: you'd like to force-kill the focused application. In OSX, you type command-option-esc (one hand), return, return (other hand). I don't know what it is in Vita, but in XP, it would require quite a bit of mousework.

I can think in several counter examples: In mac os x, - how to show the desktop with a keyboard shortcut ? - how to maximize/minimize/restore a window with a keyboard shortcut (on windows you can press Alt+spacebar, and then x/n/r) ? - how to efficiently copy/move files in finder with a keyboard shortcut ? - how is better thought the fact that when you are in finder and then you press enter, you are going to rename a…

how is better thought the fact that when you are in finder and then you press enter, you are going to rename a file? because in order to open/execute on a file you must press command+O...

You should be careful of "windows bias" (or whatever, I just made up the term). Just because we do something one way in windows, does not mean its better, just what we are accustomed to.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#73

Post by joe_the_user »

andrewtj wrote: post #70
joe_the_user wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks who say the Macintosh has better short-cuts don't get the fact that in Windows you can do anything with the keyboard, on the Macintosh, there are many things which you cannot do with the keyboard.

Respectfully, it seems like every time I see this comment it's from a Windows power user who's not that familiar with OS X - can you please provide an example?

Application switching - what's the equivalent of alt-tab? Including resizing Restoring a minimizing application.

-- Selecting an arbitrary menu item Arrowing through a menu is key for me. I'm writing from memory but last I recall working on a mac, the menus were strictly mouse only.

-- What's the equivalent of the start button, giving a list of available I can select with the keyboard? I remember not being able to navigate the launch bar with the keyboard, only the mouse. And at that time, I Googled for a while for help on this.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#74

Post by andrewtj »

joe_the_user wrote: post #73
andrewtj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, it seems like every time I see this comment it's from a Windows power user who's not that familiar with OS X - can you please provide an example?

Application switching - what's the equivalent of alt-tab? Including resizing Restoring a minimizing application. -- Selecting an arbitrary menu item Arrowing through a menu is key for me. I'm writing from memory but last I recall working on a mac, the menus were strictly mouse only. -- What's the equivalent of the start button, giving a list of available I can select with the keyboard? I remember not being able to na…

Off the top of my head:

alt-tab == ⌘-tab

Restore == Ctl-F3, arrow key to window in Dock, return

Arbitrary menu item, depends:

Application Menu (left-handside text menus) == Ctl-F2, type enough unique letters to identify the menu (or use arrow keys), return, type enough unique letters to identify the item... repeat till you get to the item you want. If this annoys you, you can implement your own keyboard shortcuts in any native application.

Status Menu (right-handside icon menus) == Ctl-F8, arrows, return.

Equivalent of the start button? Not quite sure what you mean - activate Spotlight ⌘-[Space], type app name perhaps?

I assume you mean Dock when you say launch which is activated by Ctl-F3.

The only one I don't know how to do is fine-grain resizing of a window. If you use OS X though, you'll realise the UI paradigm isn't focused on fine-grained window control though.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#75

Post by philwelch »

joe_the_user wrote: post #61
andreyf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, OSX has much better thought-out keyboard shortcuts than Windows does. A simple example: you'd like to force-kill the focused application. In OSX, you type command-option-esc (one hand), return, return (other hand). I don't know what it is in Vita, but in XP, it would require quite a bit of mousework.

The folks who say the Macintosh has better short-cuts don't get the fact that in Windows you can do anything with the keyboard, on the Macintosh, there are many things which you cannot do with the keyboard.

If it's that much at issue, you can configure Mac OS X for full keyboard control as well.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#76

Post by dkersten »

jrockway wrote: post #66
stcredzero wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-touch is right. A roommate once told me about a guy he knew who rigged up foot-pedal modifier keys to increase his Emacs productivity. And this was in the PS2 heyday! (No flames. I was an avid Emacs user in College & grad school.)

Foot pedals are indeed an excellent idea. There don't seem to be any available on the market that are programmable under non-Windows-XP, however, and I have not had the chance to build my own yet.

I believe the kinesis keyboards have an (optional) foot pedal.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#77

Post by dkersten »

mbrubeck wrote: post #72
jrockway wrote: post #53

Emacs is a 10 finger multi-touch UI. And it works very well.

So true! And xmonad (or ion, ratpoision, awesome, ...) is a 10-finger multi-touch UI with the same sort of window management ideas shown in the 10gui mockup.

Agreed. I hate reaching for the mouse. I spend most of the time typing, so why should I have to break away from this in order to manage my windows? Thanks to keyboard-centric tiled window managers (Musca being the one I like best), I don't have to.

Now all I need is to begin using a keyboard-centric web browser. Sooooon!

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#79

Post by jrockway »

dkersten wrote: post #76
jrockway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foot pedals are indeed an excellent idea. There don't seem to be any available on the market that are programmable under non-Windows-XP, however, and I have not had the chance to build my own yet.

I believe the kinesis keyboards have an (optional) foot pedal.

I am not too excited by their keyboards, unfortunately. They do sell separate USB foot pedals, but they act as the mouse buttons until you reprogram them on a Windows computer.

I don't know anyone that uses Windows.

Re: 10 finger multi-touch UI designed to replace the mouse

#80

Post by atlei »

tc wrote: post #15

While we're rethinking the human interface, could we please stop staggering typing keys and put frequently used keys like carriage return and backspace under strong fingers? [1] I was disappointed to see at the end of the 10gui video a concept keyboard with staggered keys and with backspace way over in the corner. If we can't move keyboards past the constraints imposed by mechanical typewriters, what hope do we have…

Hmmm.. I actually have both types of products.

The Kinesis keyboard with backspace, ctrl, alt, enter, home etc using my thumb AND the iGesture pad from Fingerworks ( http://www.fingerworks.com/ ) which is a large "mouse pad" where you can use gestures with 5 fingers (and it works for all applications).

The brilliant part is that the iGesture pad fits perfectly on the top of the Kinesis keyboard (the left and right part of the keyboard is separated for ergonomic reasons).

I've had the iGesture for a couple of years now - it will be a sad day when it dies as there are no replacements that I know of....maybe Apple will release a similar "mousepad" in the future ?

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