Eek! A Mouse!

[supergee]

Many of us have some sort of vermin we want Orkin to apply extreme measures to. For John C. Wright it’s people who put queer content in children’s TV. For me it’s the computer mouse.

I’ve always been dyspraxic. My prep school classmates knew I was smart enough to be there but wondered if I could walk and chew gum at the same time. Predictably, age has withered and/or custom staled, and I find myself making more and more mistakes with the allegedly user-friendly MacVermin.

It’s an analog device trying to do a digital task. In many ways we live in a world of approximations, but there are some areas where it’s a matter of discrete digits, such as the Pythagorean number mysticism Dmitri Mendeleev called the Periodic Table of the Elements. A list of sites or Word files is similarly discrete, and I’d make fewer mistakes if the mouse clicked from one to the next.

This goes with the change from the computer screen as book page to the computer screen as constantly moving TV screen, but one cranky-old-man rant a day is probably enough.

ETA: Can’t resist one follow-up. It seems that the book-to-TV shift combined with dumb ideas like “only boys like to play games” and “games, being a boy thing, should be coded by boys” to chase women out.

Thanx to andrewducker

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I agree with one aspect in particular of the follow-up: when mice were relatively new, programs accepted multiple modes of input. Now it is assumed that if you're using a program, you're okay with its single favorite method of interaction--which is less than ideal, IMO. Because it's part of my current job to anticipate how people expect a web site to function, I'm continually second-guessing trade-offs in "user experience" design. FWIW, "click or tap on the moving thing before it moves away and is replaced, with no obvious way to retrieve the first moving thing" is my least favorite, though I can cope with the various input methods (so far). Computer games are indeed a factor: having played them for thirty years (more formerly than now) has trained my reflexes somewhat....

[andrewducker]

I write UIs at work. I make sure there are always keyboard shortcuts for things, because I don't want people to have to rely on mice.

[supergee]

Excellent! We need more people doing that.

[thistleingrey]

I prefer keyboard shortcuts, too, because they are sure. Phones and tablets don't permit them....