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A computer mouse with the most common standard features: two buttons and a scroll wheel, which can also act as a third button
In computing, a mouse (plural mice, mouses, or mouse devices.) is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. (Although traditionally a button is typically round or square, modern mice have spring-loaded regions of their top surface that operate switches when pressed down lightly.) It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features that can add more control or dimensional input. The mouse's motion typically translates into the motion of a cursor on a display, which allows for fine control of a Graphical User Interface.
The name mouse originated at the Stanford Research Institute and derives from the resemblance of early models which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device (suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common mouse.[1]
The first marketed integrated mouse – shipped as a part of a computer and intended for personal computer navigation – came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Apple Macintosh; in 1984 PC columnist John C. Dvorak dismissively commented on the release of this new computer with a mouse: “There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”[2][3]
A mouse now comes with most personal computers and they are widely available for separate purchase.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Etymology and plural
* 2 Technologies
o 2.1 Early mice
o 2.2 Mechanical mouse devices
+ 2.2.1 Mechanical or opto-mechanical
o 2.3 Optical mice
+ 2.3.1 Early optical mice
+ 2.3.2 Modern optical mice
# 2.3.2.1 Laser mice
# 2.3.2.2 Color of optical mouse diodes
# 2.3.2.3 Power saving in optical mice
# 2.3.2.4 Optical versus mechanical mice
# 2.3.2.5 Glass laser mice
o 2.4 Inertial and gyroscopic mice
o 2.5 3D mice
o 2.6 Multiple-mouse systems
o 2.7 Connectivity and communication protocols
+ 2.7.1 Serial interface and protocol
+ 2.7.2 PS/2 interface and protocol
# 2.7.2.1 Extensions: IntelliMouse and others
+ 2.7.3 Apple Desktop Bus
+ 2.7.4 USB
o 2.8 Tactile mice
* 3 Applications of mice in user interfaces
o 3.1 Common mouse operations
+ 3.1.1 Low level gestures
+ 3.1.2 Standard semantic gestures
* 4 Buttons
o 4.1 Buttons
+ 4.1.1 Single button mice
+ 4.1.2 Multi button mice
# 4.1.2.1 Unix and Unix-like operating systems
# 4.1.2.2 Acorn Computers
o 4.2 Additional buttons
o 4.3 Scroll wheel
o 4.4 Scroll ball
* 5 Mouse speed
* 6 Accessories
o 6.1 Mousepad
o 6.2 Foot covers
* 7 Mice in the marketplace
* 8 Mice in gaming
o 8.1 First-person shooters
+ 8.1.1 Invert mouse setting
+ 8.1.2 Home consoles
* 9 See also
* 10 Notes
* 11 References
* 12 External links
[edit] Etymology and plural
The first known publication of the term "mouse" as a pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".[4]
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (third edition) and the fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language endorse both computer mice and computer mouses as correct plural forms for computer mouse. Some authors of technical documents may prefer either mouse devices or the more generic pointing devices. The plural mouses treats mouse as a "headless noun."
Two manuals of style in the computer industry – Sun Technical Publication's Read Me First: A Style Guide for the Computer Industry and Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications from Microsoft Press – recommend that technical writers use the term mouse devices instead of the alternatives.
[edit] Technologies
[edit] Early mice
The world's first trackball invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project in 1952. It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project.
Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov. 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent 3,835,464. Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent 3,987,685.
The first computer mouse, held by inventor Douglas Engelbart, showing the wheels that make contact with the working surface
A Smaky mouse, as invented at the EPFL by Jean-Daniel Nicoud and André Guignard.
Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the first mouse prototype in 1963[5] with the assistance of his colleague Bill English. Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his patent ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.[6]
The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect.[7]
Eleven years earlier, the Royal Canadian Navy had invented the trackball using a Canadian five-pin bowling ball as a user interface for their DATAR system.[8]
Several other experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS) exploited different body movements – for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose – but ultimately the mouse won out because of its simplicity and convenience. The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two gear-wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis. Engelbart received patent US3541541 on November 17, 1970 for an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System".[9] At the time, Engelbart envisaged that users would hold the mouse continuously in one hand and type on a five-key chord keyset with the other.[10] The concept was preceded in the 19th century by the telautograph, which also anticipated the fax machine.
[edit] Mechanical mouse devices
Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed
Operating an opto-mechanical mouse.
1: moving the mouse turns the ball.
2: X and Y rollers grip the ball and transfer movement.
3: Optical encoding disks include light holes.
4: Infrared LEDs shine through the disks.
5: Sensors gather light pulses to convert to X and Y vectors.
Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse,[11] invented the ball mouse in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC.[12] The ball-mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It came as part of the hardware package of the Xerox Alto computer. Perpendicular chopper wheels housed inside the mouse's body chopped beams of light on the way to light sensors, thus detecting in their turn the motion of the ball. This variant of the mouse resembled an inverted trackball and became the predominant form used with personal computers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Xerox PARC group also settled on the modern technique of using both hands to type on a full-size keyboard and grabbing the mouse when required.
The ball mouse has two freely-rotating rollers (black, in the photo). They are located 90 degrees apart. One roller detects the forward–backward motion of the mouse and other the left–right motion. Opposite the two rollers is a third one (white, in the photo, at 45 degrees) that is spring-loaded to push the ball against the other two rollers. Each roller is on the same shaft as an encoder wheel that has slotted edges; the slots interrupt infrared light beams to generate electrical pulses that represent wheel movement.
Each wheel's disc, however, has a pair of light beams, located so that a given beam becomes interrupted, or again starts to pass light freely, when the other beam of the pair is about halfway between changes. Simple logic circuits interpret the relative timing to indicate which direction the wheel is rotating. (This scheme is sometimes called "quadrature encoding" or some similar term by technical people.) The mouse sends these signals to the computer system via a data-formatting IC and the mouse cable. The driver software in the system converts the signals into motion of the mouse cursor along X and Y axes on the screen.
The ball is mostly steel, with a precision spherical rubber surface. The weight of the ball, given an appropriate working surface under the mouse, provides a reliable grip so the mouse's movement is transmitted accurately.
[This scheme for picking off ball rotation was used in the 19th century for Fourier analysis, such as in the Henrici and other harmonic analyzers, and also in the Ventosa integrator, essentially the same mechanism.]
Ball mice and wheel mice were manufactured for Xerox by Jack Hawley, doing business as The Mouse House in Berkeley, California, starting in 1975.[13][14]
Based on another invention by Jack Hawley, proprietor of the Mouse House, Honeywell produced another type of mechanical mouse.[15][16] Instead of a ball, it had two wheels rotating at off axes. Keytronic later produced a similar product.[17]
Modern computer mice took form at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the inspiration of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud and at the hands of engineer and watchmaker André Guignard.[18] This new design incorporated a single hard rubber mouseball and three buttons, and remained a common design until the mainstream adoption of the scroll-wheel mouse during the 1990s.[19] In 1985, René Sommer added a microprocessor to Nicoud's and Guignard's design.[20] Through this innovation, Sommer is credited with inventing a significant component of the mouse, which made it more "intelligent;"[20] though optical mice from Mouse Systems had incorporated microprocessors by 1984.[21]
Another type of mechanical mouse, the "analog mouse" (now generally regarded as obsolete), uses potentiometers rather than encoder wheels, and is typically designed to be plug-compatible with an analog joystick. The "Color Mouse," originally marketed by Radio Shack for their Color Computer (but also usable on MS-DOS machines equipped with analog joystick ports, provided the software accepted joystick input) was the best-known example.
[edit] Mechanical or opto-mechanical
A mouse described as simply "mechanical" has a contact-based incremental rotary encoder,[citation needed] a system prone to drag and unreliability of contact. Opto-mechanical mice still use a ball, but detect shaft rotation using an optical encoder with lower friction and more certain performance.
[edit] Optical mice
An optical mouse uses a light-emitting diode and photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than moving some of its parts – as in a mechanical mouse.
[edit] Early optical mice
Xerox optical mouse chip
Early optical mice, first demonstrated by two independent inventors in 1980, came in two different varieties:[22][23][24]
1. Some, such as those invented by Steve Kirsch of MIT and Mouse Systems Corporation,[25][26] used an infrared LED and a four-quadrant infrared sensor to detect grid lines printed with infrared absorbing ink on a special metallic surface. Predictive algorithms in the CPU of the mouse calculated the speed and direction over the grid.
2. Others, invented by Richard F. Lyon and sold by Xerox, used a 16-pixel visible-light image sensor with integrated motion detection on the same chip[27][28] and tracked the motion of light dots in a dark field of a printed paper or similar mouse pad.[29]
These two mouse types had very different behaviors, as the Kirsch mouse used an x-y coordinate system embedded in the pad, and would not work correctly when the pad was rotated, while the Lyon mouse used the x-y coordinate system of the mouse body, as mechanical mice do.
The optical sensor from a Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer (v. 1.0A)
[edit] Modern optical mice
Optical mouse sensor disassembled
Modern surface-independent optical mice work by using an optoelectronic sensor (essentially, a tiny low-resolution video camera) to take successive images of the surface on which the mouse operates. As computing power grew cheaper, it became possible to embed more powerful special-purpose image-processing chips in the mouse itself. This advance enabled the mouse to detect relative motion on a wide variety of surfaces, translating the movement of the mouse into the movement of the cursor and eliminating the need for a special mouse-pad. This advance paved the way for widespread adoption of optical mice.
Optical mice illuminate the surface that they track over, using an LED or a laser diode. Changes between one frame and the next are processed by the image processing part of the chip and translated into movement on the two axes using an optical flow estimation algorithm. For example, the Avago Technologies ADNS-2610 optical mouse sensor processes 1512 frames per second: each frame consisting of a rectangular array of 18×18 pixels, and each pixel can sense 64 different levels of gray.[30] Razer DeathAdder processes 6400 frames per second.[31]
[edit] Laser mice
The laser mouse uses an infrared laser diode instead of a LED to illuminate the surface beneath their sensor. As early as 1998, Sun Microsystems provided a laser mouse with their Sun SPARCstation servers and workstations.[32] However, laser mice did not enter the mainstream market until 2004, when Logitech, in partnership with Agilent Technologies, introduced its MX 1000 laser mouse.[33] This mouse uses a small infrared laser instead of an LED and has significantly increased the resolution of the image taken by the mouse. The laser enables around 20 times more surface tracking power to the surface features used for navigation compared to conventional optical mice, via interference effects.
[edit] Color of optical mouse diodes
The blue LED based V-Mouse VM-101.
The color of the optical mouse's light-emitting diodes can vary, but red is most common, as red diodes are inexpensive and silicon is very sensitive to red light.[34] Other colors are sometimes used, such as the blue LED of the V-Mouse VM-101 illustrated at right.
[edit] Power saving in optical mice
A wireless mouse on a mouse pad
Manufacturers often engineer their optical mice – especially battery-powered wireless models – to save power when possible. In order to do this, the mouse dims or blinks the laser or LED when in standby mode (each mouse has a different standby time). This function may also increase the laser / LED life. Mice designed specifically for gamers, such as the Logitech G5 or the Razer Copperhead, often lack this feature in an attempt to reduce latency and to improve responsiveness.
A typical implementation in Logitech mice has four power states, where the sensor is pulsed at different rates per second:
* 1500 – full on condition for accurate response while moving, illumination appears bright.
* 100 – fallback active condition while not moving, illumination appears dull.
* 10 – standby
* 2 – sleep state
Some other mice turn the sensor fully off in the sleep state, requiring a button click to wake.
Optical mice utilizing infrared elements (LEDs or lasers) offer substantial increases in battery life. Some Logitech mice, such as the V450 848 nm laser mouse, are capable of functioning on two AA batteries for a full year, due to the low power requirements of the infrared laser.
[edit] Optical versus mechanical mice
The Logitech iFeel optical mouse uses a red LED to project light onto the tracking surface.
Unlike mechanical mice, which can become clogged with lint, optical mice have no rolling parts; therefore, they do not require maintenance other than removing debris that might collect under the light emitter. However, they generally cannot track on glossy and transparent surfaces, including some mouse-pads, sometimes causing the cursor to drift unpredictably during operation. Mice with less image-processing power also have problems tracking fast movement, though high-end mice can track at 2 m/s (80 inches per second) and faster.
Some models of laser mice can track on glossy and transparent surfaces, and have a much higher sensitivity than either their mechanical or optical counterparts but are more expensive than their LED based or mechanical counterparts.[35]
As of 2006, mechanical mice have lower average power demands than their optical counterparts. In practice this is only significant when the mouse is either used with a battery-powered computer, such as a notebook model, or is a battery-powered wireless mouse.
Optical models will outperform mechanical mice on uneven, slick, soft, sticky, or loose surfaces, and generally in mobile situations lacking mouse pads. Because optical mice render movement based on an image which the LED (or infrared diode) illuminates, use with multicolored mouse pads may result in unreliable performance; however, laser mice do not suffer these problems and will track on such surfaces. The advent of affordable high-speed, low-resolution cameras and the integrated logic in optical mice provides an ideal laboratory for experimentation on next-generation input-devices. Experimenters can obtain low-cost components simply by taking apart a working mouse and changing the optics or by writing new software.
[edit] Glass laser mice
Glass laser (or glaser) mice have the same capability of a laser mouse but can also be used on top of mirror or transparent glass with few problems.[36]
In August 2009, Logitech introduced mice with two lasers, to track on glass and glossy surfaces better; they dubbed them "dark field" mice.[37]
[edit] Inertial and gyroscopic mice
Often called "air mice" since they do not require a surface to operate, inertial mice use a tuning fork or other accelerometer (US Patent 4787051) to detect rotary movement for every axis supported. The most common models (manufactured by Logitech and Gyration) work using 2 degrees of rotational freedom and are insensitive to spatial translation. The user requires only small wrist rotations to move the cursor, reducing user fatigue (see gorilla arm). Usually cordless, they often have a switch to deactivate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user freedom of movement without affecting the cursor position. A patent for an inertial mouse claims that such mice consume less power than optically based mice, and offer increased sensitivity, reduced weight and increased ease-of-use.[38] In combination with a wireless keyboard an inertial mouse can offer alternative ergonomic arrangements which do not require a flat work surface, potentially alleviating some types of repetitive motion injuries related to workstation posture.
[edit] 3D mice
Also known as bats,[39] flying mice, or wands,[40] these devices generally function through ultrasound and provide at least three degrees of freedom. Probably the best known example would be 3DConnexion/Logitech's SpaceMouse from the early 1990s.
In the late 1990s Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons. The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station.[41] Despite a certain appeal, it was finally discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.
A recent consumer 3D pointing device is the Wii Remote. While primarily a motion-sensing device (that is, it can determine its orientation and direction of movement), Wii Remote can also detect its spatial position by comparing the distance and position of the lights from the IR emitter using its integrated IR camera (since the nunchuk accessory lacks a camera, it can only tell its current heading and orientation). The obvious drawback to this approach is that it can only produce spatial coordinates while its camera can see the sensor bar.
In February, 2008, at the Game Developers' Conference (GDC), a company called Motion4U introduced a 3D mouse add-on called "OptiBurst" for Autodesk's Maya application. The mouse allows users to work in true 3D with 6 degrees of freedom.[citation needed] The primary advantage of this system is speed of development with organic (natural) movement.
A mouse-related controller called the SpaceBall™ [1] has a ball placed above the work surface that can easily be gripped. With spring-loaded centering, it sends both translational as well as angular displacements on all six axes, in both directions for each.
[edit] Multiple-mouse systems
Some systems allow two or more mice to be used at once as input devices. 16-bit era home computers such as the Amiga used this to allow computer games with two players interacting on the same computer. The same idea is sometimes used in collaborative software, e.g. to simulate a whiteboard that multiple users can draw on without passing a single mouse around.
Microsoft Windows, since Windows 98, has supported multiple simultaneous pointing devices. Because Windows only provides a single screen cursor, using more than one device at the same time generally results in seemingly random movements of the cursor. However, the advantage of this support lies not in simultaneous use, but in simultaneous availability for alternate use: for example, a laptop user editing a complex document might use a handheld mouse for drawing and manipulation of graphics, but when editing a section of text, use a built-in trackpad to allow movement of the cursor while keeping his hands on the keyboard. Windows' multiple-device support means that the second device is available for use without having to disconnect or disable the first.
As of 2009, Linux distributions and other operating systems that use Xorg, such as OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, support unlimited numbers of cursors and keyboards.[citation needed]
There have also been propositions of having a single operator use two mice simultaneously as a more sophisticated means of controlling various graphics and multimedia applications.[42]
[edit] Connectivity and communication protocols
To transmit their input, typical cabled mice use a thin electrical cord terminating in a standard connector, such as RS-232C, PS/2, ADB or USB. Cordless mice instead transmit data via infrared radiation (see IrDA) or radio (including Bluetooth), although many such cordless interfaces are themselves connected through the aforementioned wired serial buses.
While the electrical interface and the format of the data transmitted by commonly available mice is currently standardized on USB, in the past it varied between different manufacturers. A bus mouse used a dedicated interface card for connection to an IBM PC or compatible computer.
Mouse use in DOS applications became more common after the introduction of the Microsoft mouse, largely because Microsoft provided an open standard for communication between applications and mouse driver software. Thus, any application written to use the Microsoft standard could use a mouse with a Microsoft compatible driver (even if the mouse hardware itself was incompatible with Microsoft's). An interesting footnote is that the Microsoft driver standard communicates mouse movements in standard units called "mickeys".
[edit] Serial interface and protocol
Standard PC mice once used the RS-232C serial port via a D-subminiature connector, which provided power to run the mouse's circuits as well as data on mouse movements. The Mouse Systems Corporation version used a five-byte protocol and supported three buttons. The Microsoft version used an incompatible three-byte protocol and only allowed for two buttons. Due to the incompatibility, some manufacturers sold serial mice with a mode switch: "PC" for MSC mode, "MS" for Microsoft mode.[43]
[edit] PS/2 interface and protocol
For more details on this topic, see PS/2 connector.
With the arrival of the IBM PS/2 personal-computer series in 1987, IBM introduced the eponymous PS/2 interface for mice and keyboards, which other manufacturers rapidly adopted. The most visible change was the use of a round 6-pin mini-DIN, in lieu of the former 5-pin connector. In default mode (called stream mode) a PS/2 mouse communicates motion, and the state of each button, by means of 3-byte packets.[44] For any motion, button press or button release event, a PS/2 mouse sends, over a bi-directional serial port, a sequence of three bytes, with the following format:
Bit 7 Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1 Bit 0
Byte 1 YV XV YS XS 1 MB RB LB
Byte 2 X movement
Byte 3 Y movement
Here, XS and YS represent the sign bits of the movement vectors, XV and YV indicate an overflow in the respective vector component, and LB, MB and RB indicate the status of the left, middle and right mouse buttons (1 = pressed). PS/2 mice also understand several commands for reset and self-test, switching between different operating modes, and changing the resolution of the reported motion vectors.
In Linux, a PS/2 mouse is detected as a /dev/psaux device.
[edit] Extensions: IntelliMouse and others
A Microsoft IntelliMouse relies on an extension of the PS/2 protocol: the ImPS/2 or IMPS/2 protocol (the abbreviation combines the concepts of "IntelliMouse" and "PS/2"). It initially operates in standard PS/2 format, for backwards compatibility. After the host sends a special command sequence, it switches to an extended format in which a fourth byte carries information about wheel movements. The IntelliMouse Explorer works analogously, with the difference that its 4-byte packets also allow for two additional buttons (for a total of five).[45]
The Typhoon mouse uses 6-byte packets which can appear as a sequence of two standard 3-byte packets, such that an ordinary PS/2 driver can handle them.[46]
Mouse vendors also use other extended formats, often without providing public documentation.
For 3-D (or 6-degree-of-freedom) input, vendors have made many extensions both to the hardware and to software. In the late 90's Logitech created ultrasound based tracking which gave 3D input to a few millimeters accuracy, which worked well as an input device but failed as a profitable product. In 2008, Motion4U introduced its "OptiBurst" system using IR tracking for use as a Maya (graphics software) plugin.
[edit] Apple Desktop Bus
Apple Macintosh Plus mice, 1986
In 1986 Apple first implemented the Apple Desktop Bus allowing the daisy-chaining together of up to 16 devices, including arbitrarily many mice and other devices on the same bus with no configuration whatsoever. Featuring only a single data pin, the bus used a purely polled approach to computer/mouse communications and survived as the standard on mainstream models (including a number of non-Apple workstations) until 1998 when iMac began the industry-wide switch to using USB. Beginning with the "Bronze Keyboard" PowerBook G3 in May 1999, Apple dropped the external ADB port in favor of USB, but retained an internal ADB connection in the PowerBook G4 for communication with its built-in keyboard and trackpad until early 2005.
[edit] USB
The industry-standard (USB protocol and its connector have become widely used for mice; it's currently among the most popular types.[47]
[edit] Tactile mice
In 2000, Logitech introduced the "tactile mouse", which contained a small actuator that made the mouse vibrate. Such a mouse can augment user-interfaces with haptic feedback, such as giving feedback when crossing a window boundary. To surf by touch requires the user to be able to feel depth or hardness; this ability was realized with the first electrorheological tactile mice[48] but never marketed.
[edit] Applications of mice in user interfaces
A mouse typically controls the motion of a cursor in two dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). Clicking or hovering (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an area) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical interfaces) through small images called "icons" and other elements. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper notebook, and clicking while the cursor hovers this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a window. (See also point-and-click)
Users can also employ mice gesturally; meaning that a stylized motion of the mouse cursor itself, called a "gesture", can issue a command or map to a specific action. For example, in a drawing program, moving the mouse in a rapid "x" motion over a shape might delete the shape.
Gestural interfaces occur more rarely than plain pointing-and-clicking; and people often find them more difficult to use, because they require finer motor-control from the user. However, a few gestural conventions have become widespread, including the drag-and-drop gesture, in which:
1. The user presses the mouse button while the mouse cursor hovers over an interface object
2. The user moves the cursor to a different location while holding the button down
3. The user releases the mouse button
For example, a user might drag-and-drop a picture representing a file onto a picture of a trash can, thus instructing the system to delete the file.
Other uses of the mouse's input occur commonly in special application-domains. In interactive three-dimensional graphics, the mouse's motion often translates directly into changes in the virtual camera's orientation. For example, in the first-person shooter genre of games (see below), players usually employ the mouse to control the direction in which the virtual player's "head" faces: moving the mouse up will cause the player to look up, revealing the view above the player's head. A related function makes an image of an object rotate, so that all sides can be examined.
When mice have more than one button, software may assign different functions to each button. Often, the primary (leftmost in a right-handed configuration) button on the mouse will select items, and the secondary (rightmost in a right-handed) button will bring up a menu of alternative actions applicable to that item. For example, on platforms with more than one button, the Mozilla web browser will follow a link in response to a primary button click, will bring up a contextual menu of alternative actions for that link in response to a secondary-button click, and will often open the link in a new tab or window in response to a click with the tertiary (middle) mouse button.
[edit] Common mouse operations
Different ways of operating the mouse cause specific things to happen in the GUI:
[edit] Low level gestures
* Click - pressing and releasing a button.
o (left) Single-click - clicking the main button.
o (left) Double-click - clicking the button two times in quick succession counts as a different gesture than two separate single clicks.
o (left) Triple-click - clicking the button three times in quick succession.
o Right-click - clicking the secondary button.
* Drag - pressing and holding a button, then moving the mouse without releasing. (Use the command "drag with the right mouse button" instead of just "drag" when you instruct a user to drag an object while holding the right mouse button down instead of the more commonly used left mouse button.)
* Button chording (a.k.a. Rocker navigation).
o Combination of right-click then left-click.
o Combination of left-click then right-click or keyboard letter.
o Combination of left or right-click and the mouse wheel.
* Clicking while holding down a modifier key.
[edit] Standard semantic gestures
* Rollover
* Selection
* Menu traversal
* Drag and drop
* Pointing
* Goal crossing
[edit] Buttons
In contrast to the motion-sensing mechanism, the mouse's buttons have changed little over the years, varying mostly in shape, number, and placement. Engelbart's very first mouse had a single button; Xerox PARC soon designed a three-button model, but reduced the count to two for Xerox products. After experimenting with 4-button prototypes Apple reduced it back to one button with the Macintosh in 1984, while Unix workstations from Sun and others used three buttons. OEM bundled mice usually have between one and three buttons, although in the aftermarket many mice have always had five or more.
Apple Mighty Mouse with capacitance triggered buttons
A mouse click is the action of pressing (i.e. 'clicking', an onomatopoeia) a button in order to trigger an action, usually in the context of a graphical user interface (GUI). 'Clicking' an onscreen button is accomplished by pressing on the real mouse button while the cursor is placed over the button icon.
The reason for the clicking noise made is due to the specific switch technology used nearly universally in computer mice. The switch is a subminiature precision snap-action type; the first of such types were the Honeywell MICRO SWITCH™ products. (See micro switch.)
Double clicking refers to clicking (and, naturally, releasing) a button (often the primary one) twice. Software recognizes both clicks, and if the second occurs within a short time, the action is recognized as a double click. If the second click is made after the time expires, it's considered to be a new, single click. Any decent operating system interface includes ability to set a continuously-adjustable time interval, along with a simple way to test the setting. Some software recognizes three or more clicks, such as progressively selecting a word, sentence, or paragraph in a word processor text page as more clicks are given in a sequence.
The three-button scrollmouse has become the most commonly available design. As of 2007 (and roughly since the late 1990s), users most commonly employ the second button to invoke a contextual menu in the computer's software user interface, which contains options specifically tailored to the interface element over which the mouse cursor currently sits. By default, the primary mouse button sits located on the left-hand side of the mouse, for the benefit of right-handed users; left-handed users can usually reverse this configuration via software.
On systems with three-button mice, pressing the center button (a middle click) typically opens a system-wide noncontextual menu. In the X Window System, middle-clicking by default pastes the contents of the primary buffer at the cursor's position. Many users of two-button mice emulate a three-button mouse by clicking both the right and left buttons simultaneously.
Common mice have a wheel with a detent ("bumpy" feel) to keep it from drifting accidentally; this wheel also has an optical encoder like those for the ball; it's typically used to scroll a tall window vertically. However, many such scroll wheels are mounted in a little internal spring-loaded frame so that simply pushing down on them makes them work as a third button.
[edit] Buttons
One button mouse
Three-button mouse
Five button ergonomic mouse
The issue of whether pack-in bundled mice should have exactly one button or more than one has attracted an enormous amount of controversy.
[edit] Single button mice
From the first Macintosh until late 2005 Apple shipped every computer with a single-button mouse, whereas most other platforms used multi-button mice. Apple and its advocates promoted single-button mice as more user-friendly, and portrayed multi-button mice as confusing for novice users and that multiple button mice interfaces introduce computer accessibility restrictive elements[dead link] including right click, double click, and middle click.
The Macintosh user interface, by design, always has and still does make all functions available with a single-button mouse. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines still specify that all software-providers need to make functions available with a single button mouse. Context menus are available using the Control Key ctrl.
[edit] Multi button mice
The original Mac OS assumed a one-button mouse. While there has long been an aftermarket for mice with two, three, or more buttons, and extensive configurable support to complement such devices in all major software packages on the platform, Mac OS X shipped with hardcoded support for multi-button mice. X Window System applications, which Mac OS X can also run, have developed with the use of two-button or even three-button mice in mind.
On August 2, 2005, Apple introduced their Mighty Mouse multi-button mouse, which has four independently-programmable buttons and a trackball-like "scroll ball" which allows the user to scroll in any direction. Since the mouse uses touch-sensitive technology, users can treat it as a one-, two-, three-, or four-button mouse, as desired.
More recently, Apple has released a mouse with no buttons, but instead the touch sensitivity of the new Multi-Touch trackpads. Left and right click are available in their respective areas, but that space is also used when scrolling, since the mouse is simply one surface on the top. The standard optics of the Mighty Mouse appear on the underside of the new Magic Mouse.
Advocates of multiple-button mice argue that support for a single-button mouse often leads to clumsy workarounds in interfaces where a given object may have more than one appropriate action. One workaround was the double click, first used on the Apple Lisa, to allow both the "select" and "open" operation to be performed with a single button. Several common workarounds exist, and some are specified by the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.
One such workaround (that favored on Apple platforms) has the user hold down one or more keys on the keyboard before pressing the mouse button (typically control on a Macintosh for contextual menus). This has the disadvantage that it requires that both the user's hands be engaged. It also requires that the user perform actions on completely separate devices in concert; that is, holding a key on the keyboard while pressing a button on the mouse. This can be a difficult task for a disabled user, although can be remedied by allowing keys to stick so that they do not need to be pressed down.
Another involves the press-and-hold technique. In a press-and-hold, the user presses and holds the single button. After a certain period, software perceives the button press not as a single click but as a separate action. This has two drawbacks: first, a slow user may press-and-hold inadvertently. Second, the user must wait for the software to detect the click as a press-and-hold, otherwise the system might interpret the button-depression as a single click. Furthermore, the remedies for these two drawbacks conflict with each other: the longer the lag time, the more the user must wait; and the shorter the lag time, the more likely it becomes that some user will accidentally press-and-hold when meaning to click. Studies have found all of the above workarounds less usable than additional mouse buttons for experienced users.[citation needed]
While historically, most PC mice provided two or three buttons, only the primary button was standardized in use for MS-DOS and versions of Windows through 3.1x; support and functionality for additional buttons was application specific. However, in 1992, Borland released Quattro Pro for Windows (QPW), which used the right (or secondary) mouse button to bring up a context menu for the screen object clicked (an innovation previously used on the Xerox Alto, but new to most users). Borland actively promoted the feature, advertising QPW as "The right choice", and the innovation was widely hailed as intuitive and simple. Other applications quickly followed suit, and the "right-click for
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