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StrokeIt
Why isn't StrokeIt more popular?Posted by Wesley
I have mentioned it to a lot of people. Yet no one ever really ever gives me any feedback at all. Their loss...this program is awesome and it takes up almost no resources at all! I am glad they have made updates to it, I will look into them. I will post this at a forum I always participate in Hvyhitter.com now that it has been updated hopefully they'll give it a try. I've used this for years and it's hard to use another PC without it.
I figured out one more reason. When Strokeit installs, it silently puts an icon of itself into the tray. A new user's first instinct is to right click this icon for accessing configuration. Strokeit (as expected) instead disables itself. (I encountered this with two or three friends to whom I introduced Strokeit.)
The user gets frustrated that right clicking does not give any menu and that Strokeit does not seem to work after install (when in fact the user disabled it by right clicking). His next reaction is likely to uninstall this "seemingly useless" program.
I think it is the same as with other gadgets and tricks: people are doing things the way they always have, and, if they do not feel they are missing something, they are unwilling to spend any time learning new things. I have been trying to teach my friends many things regarding the computer and browsing, but they hardly ever listen... I suppose I have the same attitude in some situations. People learn so much faster when they want to know something, as opposed to when they are "not in the mood".
amit Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- (...) > > The user gets frustrated that right clicking does > not give any menu and that Strokeit does not seem (...) If it would be possible to draw a gesture holding rigt and left button at the same time, user could click the right button to open menu. Sensiva do that. And when you must use right and left button at the same time to do a gesture, you can work faster without errors of interpretation. Because, sometime, StokeIt misunderstand tittle movements when you click and work quickly with a pen (wacom). Teuf
I'd discourage :) the use of expression 'must'. It includes restriction. Not to mention, that using a single button you have the ability to cancel a gesture by pressing the other one without having to wait for the timeout (if it is set at all) while using both of them would result in multiple scenarios according which button is released first, what happens when a button is released and so on.
I also remind you that there are other mouse/pen/touchpad drivers/accessories that assign different functions to pressing both buttons simultaneously (eg. middle button, scroll mode, etc.). Having to press both buttons to draw a gesture would interfere with those functions or completely disable them and cause more pain than gain. Besides, I doubt that using both buttons for gestures would enhance gesture interpretation. IMHO those errors come from the fact that though the priority of StrokeIt set to Above Normal and jumps to High when drawing, it does not happen fast enough (or perhaps High is not enough).
Sorry Gemisigo, English is not my mother language and I rarely use it, so I do simple sentenses.
What I can say.... I Draw with Autocad and I use a lot Sensiva (Mouse gesture) with a pen tablet. (What a powerful system to control PC/Autocad with your "brain" !!!) When I use Sensiva with both buttons I can work very fast without any problems. If I use it (or StrokeIt) with a single button it make mistakes... This is because when you use a pen instead of a mouse, and you work fast, each "click" can make a little movement which can be misunderstanding as a gesture. With a mouse, it seems there is no problems :-) So...I would replace "must" by "have the choice". It's much better ;-) or "if the software allows to use both button too..." Is there someone who's working on new releases ? Best Regards Teuf
Sorry, I did not want to be a smart ass:)
Using both buttons would take away 'button gestures' eg. LMB down/up. Your problem is that you move the pen a little bit when you click, and that is interpreted as a gesture, am I correct? You could try to set an extremely low gesture timeout but I think that would render normal use more difficult. The ultimate solution would be a setting that would allow you to set gesture threshold manually so that you have to move the cursor at least x pixels distance from its original position to be detected as a gesture. According to my own experiences it works this way but the threshold is hardwired and not configurable. You should post a feature request with that.
You are correct and you are thrue.
But it will be nice to have the choice. I never use button gesture. By the way, you idea "to move the cursor at least x pixels distance from its original position to be detected as a gesture" is quite nice. I buy both :-) In my mind there is no doubt. A little pen tablet (such wacom volito or bamboo) with a mousse gesture software/driver is far efficient and accurate than a mouse or short cuts keyboard You really control a computer with the mind without wasting time to think what to do or where to put what :-) You just use a so used tool : a pen ! and the movements of your fingers. What a essential software !! I dont understand why mouse gestures is so few used...
I recommended to many people this little marvel. Maybe 20? 30? Not ONE of them as far as I know uses it. Actually, only a few tried to use it but didn't like. Also, these guys do not like/use Opera (the browser I recommend usually) gestures.
I'm not a technician, but being the most computer knowledgeable in my group of friends bring them to me when they do stupid things and ruin their OS-es. Most of these people are girls, as they seem to have more problems with computers. All educated, though I wouldn't call but a few "intelligent". But none of these like gestures. It puzzles me.
Yeah, I recognize the problem. I actually installed Fire Gestures in a female friend's Firefox, and she seemed to like it; but she never got to using it afterwards, so perhaps her initial interest was mere politeness after all.
I do have another female friend in whose Firefox I installed Easy Drag to Go, which allows her to open a link in a new foreground tab by dragging it up with the left mouse button, down for background; dragging a picture to the right saves it to disk, selecting and dragging a word up Googles it in a new tab, all customizable of course, etc. etc. So this is basically context-sensitive mouse gestures with the left mouse button, which is really cool (I wish StrokeIt had some easy way to interact with context; it can probably be done with Lua scripts though). She is actually using it all the time and she thanked me for installing it, even though she is generally resistant when I try to foist things on her (I wonder why), and even though she is not tech savvy. It must be noted that both girls are very rational and intelligent in general. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6639/ I have a theory: my friends can be categorized as either interested in computers or not. Those who are not do not care too much about efficiency and and not interested in learning new things about computers, because they just find them dull; those who are interested usually say the prefer the keyboard for everything, and think they are faster with that in any situation. That is of course nonsense. Granted, when you are typing anyway, it is fastest to use keyboard shortcuts, as it often is in Word or when you are typing an address in the location bar of your browser; however, when you happen to be using the mouse, as when you are normally browsing the internet, it is fasted to use a mouse gesture, since otherwise you'd have to take your hand off the mouse and move it to the keyboard, which takes time, and then perhaps move it back to the mouse afterwards, since you were apparently doing something that you preferred to do with the mouse. Woohoo I just completed an entire paragraph that was just a single sentence. Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2010 01:09PM by Cerberus.
@cerberus
how do you callup a ahk script using a mouse gesture in strokeit, I havent managed yet!! I use run-program and then the path to ahk.exe and in arguments the path to the script but I just get an error message that it cant open the script Oh I have solved it you have to put double quotes around the path to the script "C:\myscripts\myscript.ahk" if you just put C:\myscripts\myscript.ahk it wont work Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2011 04:50AM by chicken pie4 tea.
Cerberus Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > Hear, hear! I couldn't live without 4 things: > 1. Windows > 2. StrokeIt > 3. Firefox > 4. Autohotkey For me, windows is there in the list because of strokeit. I would have long ago migrated to Linux if there was a decent Strokeit replacement. Autohotkey seems quite interesting. Any pointers on how to get started with it? When I rebuild my computer, some of the first things I do is: 1) install strokeit 2) install firefox 3) install keytweak (depending on the computer) 4) install media player classic
Autohotkey is basically a programming language. It is special in two ways:
1. It is geared towards beginners: if you have never programmed anything in your life before, as I hadn't before AHK, you can still create some pretty useful scripts in a few minutes, thanks to its excellent help file (don't ever waste time trying to do something without checking the example in the help file). However, once you get to know AHK, you will find that its also has many advanced features, so that it can do almost as much as a truly hard-core programming language like C or VSB or something (actually I have no idea how those work). Its beauty is that it is both easy and complicated at the same time: you just use what you need. A few examples: :*?:e//::éThis makes it so that, every time I type e//, anywhere on my computer, it gets changed automatically into é. I have have dateqq set to automatically type the full date of today. #IfWinActive, ahk_class Photoshop
MButton::
SendInput, {Space Down}
Click Down
return
MButton Up::
Click Up
SendInput, {Space Up}
return
#IfWinActive
This makes it so that I can drag the photo I am editing in Photoshop in any direction with the middle mouse button. (I use a Firefox extension to do the same in FF, by the way.)
Basically AHK can do anything, and you can have it all triggered by various hotkeys; these hotkeys you can then assign to gestures in StrokeIt. I have also, for example, created a program than lets me research any word I see anywhere in my computer on the internet. I select a word in, say, Word; I draw a gesture; a small window pops up where I can edit my search phrase; I then click the button for the engine I want to use, such as Google, Youtube, Howjsay, Dictionary.com, anything. I also have the Oxford English Dictionary installed on my computer, and I use SI + AHK to search for any word in the OED too. Etc, etc! 2. If you are a real programmer already, there is no special reason to use AHK; in fact, you might find it a tad less well organized than C, etc, because AHK sometimes has to use slightly twisted syntax to accommodate for ease of use for beginners. It doesn't bother me (on teh contrary), but, then again, I am not a programmer. Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2011 04:30PM by Cerberus.
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