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GNOME 3.10 ReleasedGNOME 3.10 ReleasedPosted Sep 29, 2013 14:47 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)In reply to: GNOME 3.10 Released by rsidd Parent article: GNOME 3.10 Released
> The question here, to me, is very simple. Why design a new feature around a button that hardly exists on most new machines?
I just went to my favorite hardware vendor website.
Every single mouse for sale there had three or more buttons.
(you do know that the mouse wheel is a clickable button, don't you? you can roll up, down, or click)
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GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 15:34 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
I have news for you.
1. For many years now, laptops have outsold desktops. Today the margin isn't close.
2. Very few laptops come with three-button trackpads.
3. Very few laptop users buy mice to use with their laptops. If they are dissatisfied with the trackpad's accuracy (graphics professionals, for example) they are more likely to buy a Wacom tablet or something.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 15:47 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
1. yes
2. yes, more or less: at my home we have four current laptops: a MacBook, an Acer, a Sony, and a HP; the Mac has a gesture (three-finger tap), the Acer has a physical third button/"mouse wheel" (it's actually a five-way clickable joystick thingy), the Sony and the HP both have two pysical buttons, but you can click on both at the same time and get the "third button" effect. 3. actually, at the "shop", where we have some 300 laptops, I haven't ever seen one of them without an external mouse; apparently, politicians can't use the trackpads to save their lives... :-D
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 21:53 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I see a very large percentage of the people who are using laptops using them as a portable desktop, i.e. they take it from one location with a keyboard/mouse/monitor to another similarly equipped.
I also see a lot of the users who use their laptops in other places pull out a 'real' mouse and plug it in.
No, it's not every laptop, but it's a rather large percentage of laptop users.
I also see laptops with the edge of their touchpad configured to act as a scroll wheel, that's a third button.
It's not nearly as uncommon to have a third button as you think.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:04 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I also see laptops with the edge of their touchpad configured to act as a scroll wheel, that's a third button. Are you sure? I've worked with a few such models, and yes, touchpad was able to emulate scroll well (in fact you can pick if you want edge scroll or two-finger scroll), but it was not able to emulate third button. What kind of driver do you need to enable this functionality?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:11 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
with at least a couple brands of laptops it didn't require any special driver. The system apparently saw it the same as a mouse wheel on a normal mouse. this wasn't just a matter of 'use the edge' there was actually a ridge separating the 'wheel' portion from the main portion, and tapping on the wheel portion clicked the third button.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:31 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Any Synaptics touchpad can be configured to emulate middle-click if you click on a special zone.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 19:55 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
It's a poor but not entirely useless substitute for a real third button. It's unnecessarily hard to push it without also scrolling at the same time, however. Proper mice with three real buttons do exist but they are hard to find.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 21:06 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> It's unnecessarily hard to push it without also scrolling at the same time, however
at the house we have some cheap mice, and not one of us has this complaint... the movements (clicking versus scrolling) are just too different.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 0:00 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
I've had this problem with some mice which have very small scroll increments (typically they make a clicking sound) and which compensate by only sending scroll signals to the PC every 3 or 4 clicks.
With, e.g. the Microsoft white mice I have never had this problem.
It's unfortunately an issue of stupid design rather than build quality, so you can't avoid the problem by just buying expensive mice.
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