What Should The Middle Mouse Button Mean?

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101

The Smaky computer, developed by Prof. Nicoud, the father of the first Logitech mouse, has always had a three button mouse.

Here are a few pictures of various mice developed by Prof. Nicoud :
http://www.smaky.ch/chapitre.php?id=lami_7

The middle mouse button on the Smaky computer brings up the application menu, whereas the left button is used to click and the right mouse button produces what is now known as a contextual menu.

If you want to play with a Smaky emulator (“tlcharger”), one is available for free here (in French only):
http://www.smaky.ch/~infini/

102

I primarily use my mouse to paste text. Considering that I use rxvt as my terminal emulator and Fluxbox as my window manager, copy/paste becomes a single click act. Select the text, left click and a middle button click in the target area. Pretty convenient I should say.

103

Doesn’t anyone know left-handed users that switch their mouse buttons?
Left and Right buttons don’t exist, when ever I write software UI software I call them primary and secondary buttons.
On a more related note I’ve learned to never assign something to the middle(terciary) button. The reason being when you have non mouse masters try your software, they occasionally push the wheel by accident(I can’t even say how many people I’ve met that didn’t know the wheel IS a button), and when that happens they think its a bug, and I get a bug report that my middle button functionality is some sort of mysterious bug that happens while scrolling…

I vote that we remove the middle button, simple is beautiful, and the mouse is beautiful eough with 2 buttons and a wheel, anything more than that is just geekiness.

104

I would resent the idea of developing a (new) convention for a third mouse button. I, like many before me, have already developed (by intuition) a convention for the use of the middle finger: for waving at {entity}'s blog posts! (j/k)

105

Recently, I had to debug a friend’s code on his computer using his Pen Mouse (not to be confused with, say a Wacom Tablet pen).

It was so natural and comfortable it has led me to question the design of mice in general. Most manufacturers vary the buttons and aspects of the shape, but few have questioned whether the shape of the mouse is optimal for the task.

The thing that grabbed me about the pen mouse is that I had no feeling of tension in my forearm when moving it about and no sense of pulling on the tendons in the back of my hand when clicking the buttons. When using it, the side of your hand slides on the desk, as when writing with a pen, so you don’t need a gel wrist rest.

I have to admit, I am tempted to buy one:

[http://uk.gizmodo.com/2006/07/23/wowpen_mouse_helps_ease_old_ma.html]

I am somewhat surprised to discover they are quite thin on the ground here: major dealers have every type of mouse on the market, except those which are not “classic” shapes. A bit like the way supermarkets insist on having 6 brands of orange juice and no grape juice.

106

The 4th button on my MS Notebook mouse is a magnifier. It’s like running a magnifying glass over your screen. The graphics are good and it’s a neat feature but I haven’t found a single use for it yet.

107

I hate the autoscroll behaviour too

I think pasting of Xorg with middle mouse is one good feature

108

One more comment from me, on a slight tangent:
In the (mostly Linux but also available for other OSs) KDE desktop, the default configuration doesn’t use double-clicking. A single left-click does the “activate” action. Right-click selects and brings up the context menu, or select-without-activate can be done by drawing a frame around what to select, as people have done since the earliest Macs (at least).

Of course, like everything in KDE, this behavior can be reconfigured to a more customary style.

109

Only somebody in-doctrinated in MS Windows could write such utter drivel.

110

One of the scientist in a school I attended, was used as a cobaye at the xerox palto alto parc for the first mice test. He said the 3 buttons (as on some unices) were unusable. Even though he was optimizing the assembly code of a dec alpha for his fluid calculus and thus was able to handle quite some complexity, he was so repelled by 3 buttons mice, therefore he had a mac with a single button mouse.

I guess he nowadays is an happy 3+ button mouse user, because I guess you miss 2 points :

  • simplicity is complex ;
  • time.

The WIMP model took other 10 years to fully get accepted as a standard. It seems simple, but apple has a great responsability in simplifying. And user, even those not using mac got use to standardized dialog box, menu, icons, click meaning … That make them use a simple idea that was untold to them. (the hidden information embedded in the desktop metaphor).

The idea has spread, has stabilized, and it is now possible to question the requirement that made the model readable and push to the next step. One button mice were not an error, they now are. 3 buttons mice were an error, they are now the good choice.

The adoptance of a technology, and its rate of adoptance are far more importance than its “rightness”.

Life is a differential equation from which reality derives. ;o)

111

The problem is everyone has developed different ways of using their mouse. I for one can’t stand having buttons on the side as I always accidently click them. But I do love middle click scrolling, as you can get far more precision as to where you scroll beyond the “x pixels” of the scrollwheel. It also means you can do things like slowly scroll a page, which I do a lot when reading comments, without having to constantly flick the wheel.

112

Thinking about it, mice are becoming somewhat irrelevant.

I really like Apple’s recent innovations using gestures with a trackpad.

  • pinching and un-pinching for zooming.
  • two fingers held down for scrolling up/down or left/right
  • two fingers on pad and click for right-click (context menu)

It really makes up for the one button. It also makes it easier because it’s just one big button and the trackpad doesn’t care exactly where you touch, etc. With the new ipod, the flicking left/right is also pretty innovative. I wouldn’t want to do it for all my images, but it’s showing how much more capable.

Mice are great for precision, and I’m a longtime mouse user. I’m not saying wholly irrelevant, but for ‘normal’ use, trackpads are pretty sweet. I’d hate to use one for vids though - nothing beats mouse+keyboard for that. I just can’t see the mouse being as capable as a 2-d touch sensitive surface. I’ve tried mouse gestures but my wrists start to ache, so it can’t be good RSI-wise.

As far as context menus go, I like how Microsoft has tackled it. No longer are we required to right-click, but instead visual prompts indicate alternate behavior is available when the mouse is near. Think Visual Studio and Word and the little drop down icons that appear. MS has made the somewhat overdone concept of context menu’s no longer reliant on a right-mouse button, more usable for the masses, and works when you don’t have a mouse available (i.e touch-sensitive screens).

Middle buttons should be application specific and customizable. No real software will rely on any more that a 2 button, non-scrolling mouse, because you always have to account for the lowest common denominator. That’s life. In fact, after you’ve been around for a while, you no longer customize anything. I use 2 button scroller mice, default settings, default fonts, default key bindings, etc. I can sit at any workstation and code without having to think about it.

The articles bring up some good points though. Labeling the mouse buttons is a good idea, because essentially that would help users, and users buy software. When software works, users are happy and buy more software. Powerful defaults (as Jeff blogged about once upon a time) can be a key differentiator.

113

the middle click is the most important button in minesweeper. when a number n has n bombs marked around it, you middle click on it to clear all the non-bomb spaces around it.

114

The many-function middle button has it’s place, however. It seems to serve almost always as a ‘special’ button that does something that is only needed/wanted in that particular applications. In this way it defies standardization.

I support standardizing its behaivor with tabs, however. That is how I use it most, and the only one that seems reasonably general.

Daniel

115

C’mon, you are discussing mouse buttons? are we in the 80s or what!

116

defacto for middle click to open a new tab? Rediculous, middle button is for scrolling, CTRL+LEFT Click opens a new tab, once you fix the browsers handling of new windows to actually opn in a tab. Now that’s convenient!

=]

117

You said :
“Another odd middle-click behavior that’s defined in both Internet Explorer and Firefox is the modal “autoscroll mode”.”

But this is false. This is not IE nor Firefox, but your mouse driver behaviour on windows swcollable panes. This happens in a lot of apps.

You have not this ugly behaviour on Linux…
On Windows, you can avoid installing driver that cause this behaviour or configure it with its own config panel.

Do not blame Browsers, this not their fault.

I think the X behaviour is good, because it let FF setting its “new tab” behaviour when clickung a link and it uses the “paste” behaviour when clicking a field.

But the best is the trackball of the mighty mouse, because your can click as in X and scroll every direction !

118

With mouse at left hand, my right is on the keyboard keypad, ready to use arrows or delete.

With this arrangement I never even THINK about using any but the basic two mouse buttons. And I execute most actions much faster than I would using just the mouse.

You right-handed people slay me, really.

119

Pffft. Middle mouse buttons existed long before MS Windows, and usually (as in ‘in xterm’) meant ‘paste’. (Left was ‘select’, and right was ‘extend selection’, along with proper multi-click behaviour on both.) xterm also has a scrollbar that it only really usable with multiple buttons, and had it on the left, meaning that the distance between text and scrollbar was much shorter. Both together made a scroll wheel much less needed.

And for GUI fun: Google for ‘interclicking’ (and ‘oberon’).

120

I love the “modal autoscroll mode”, especially for its smooth and exact way of scrolling. This is what I really miss in the Unix World.

And why not keep the middle mouse button behaviour application-defined? It gives way more freedom in UI-design for applications, without breaking all conventions.