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StrokeIt
Better default gestures.Posted by Glen Murphy
While 'W' for web, and 'E' for email are easy to remember, they're also a pain in the rear to actually execute.
Many people I know who've tried StrokeIt had given up and stopped using it before I showed them that remapping '\ Up' to web, '\ Down' to explorer and 'T' to close makes things much much faster. (For example, using '\ Up' for web adds almost no movement time, as the user usually has to move their mouse up to the location dialogue or bookmarks menu) Maybe give the user a choice at installation between 'speed' or 'ease'?
I'd think that more users would get discouraged by the confusing gestures than would get confused by the difficult (which, mind you is trainable) or "slowness" of drawing the default gestures. And for the record, mapping a non-gesture mouse button_up to close, is faster even than T. Example: Say your right mouse button (the default) is the gesture button, right click and hold, tap your left button, and the window closes, then you can release your gesture button.
-Scott
I'm all for this. Even if it means creating a separate "Power User" addon pack to overwrite the existing gestures, I would love to see what we can come up with to make mouse gestures more seamless.
Consider this an open call for all innovative gesture bindings. I'll do my best to keep track of suggestions and trying to make everything well integrated, but I need creative ideas and suggestions from everyone. -- Jeff
Hi!
Personally, i use <Left-Right-Left> and <Right-Left-Right> to close things (Progs or tabs in Progs, etc). I think drawing Characters is to slow, but this swinging works well (once you trained StrokeIt with it). I use <Down> to have new things (new Tabs/Documents). As said, characters are hard to paint (StrokeIt allways uses to mess up <E> with <C>, which is a bad thing ;o). Gestures I like and that are quick to do are <Left> and <Right> (with combinations as mentioned above- although if the <L-R-L> is used, the <L-R> and <R-L> should't be used, that would just confuse), <Up-Left>, <Up-Right>, <Down-Left>,, <Down-Right> <Up>, <Down> and combinations of these (personally i use <Down-(Right|Left)> for Winamp next/back, <Down-Up> for Winamp play/pause-toggle). All the diagonal ups and downs have their original meaning... You asked for it... ;o) Dirk
I prefer simple actions which are also easy to remember and perform.
For example, Up => get something up => Copy Down => put something back => Paste /Down and \Down => slash with a sword (usually downward) => Cut, Delete C ("<"), L => X is not so easy to draw, so use "<" or "L" instead => Close (application or MDI) Left => As the arrow goes => Navigate Back, Undo Right => As the arrow goes => Navigate Forward, Redo Down-Left => As it draws on the keyboard => Enter (press the default button of a popup dialog window)
My setup is very similar to that of Dirk and i'd like it very much if something like this would become more of a standard because I think it really is a lot more seamless than drawing characters.
Even if it is easier to remember that e.g. "e" opens a new explorer window it wouldn't take too long to get used to "down" -> opening a new window/tab of the current application (e.g. explorer, mozilla -> apps where you *need* several windows/tabs). In Explorer "up" goes up one directory... On other apps - media players - I have mapped "down" to play/pause and up to "open files".... i think every average user might be fine with a similar config. The great thing about strokeit is of course that it IS possible to set the gestures the way YOU want....
Not that there isn't something to say about the rememberability of character gestures, I concur that quicker gestures are more desirable when you want to get the work done.
I think it would be nice if there were a "simple" mode so gestures could be defined like they are in the Mozilla Firebird "all-in-one gestures" extension. [url=http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marc.boullet/ext/extensions-en.html]http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marc.boullet/ext/extensions-en.html[/url] All gestures would be defined (possibly with a helper application?) with combinations of only up, left, right, down. If you were to draw the possible gestures in a tree structure you'd see you'd have nearly as many gestures in three levels of depth (52 vs the original 58 character gestures) meaning only 3 strokes long or less (Right-Left-Right, Right-Down-Up, Up, Up-Left, etc). Another level of depth would yield a total possible 160 gestures. Granted most applications don't have nearly 50 common tasks and it would probably be better to not have such a densely populated graph. I imagine the 30-ish predefined gestures for the aforementioned extension are enough for most common tasks in most programs for most users. It would probably be pretty easy to lock your software into seeing only up-down-left-right if so desired. And redefining the gestures from characters to combinations, while not trivial, is more tedius than difficult. I, for one, wouldn't mind having "create new folder" be up-right-down instead of anything with curves I might mess up. PS. Have you thought about adding mouse wheel / rocker gestures such as an alternative to alt-tab? Like Alt+Wheel cycles through windows or Ctrl+Wheel to go forward and backward in a browser or in folders? Much quicker than left, left, left, left to get all the way back to the page you want.
> PS. Have you thought about adding mouse wheel / rocker
> gestures such as an alternative to alt-tab? Like Alt+Wheel > cycles through windows or Ctrl+Wheel to go forward and > backward in a browser or in folders? Much quicker than left, > left, left, left to get all the way back to the page you want. Great idea!! I like it. I will have a Wheel-Up and a Wheel-Down guesture to back and forward my Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, tonight! There's no need to use my left hand to tough the Ctrl or Alt on the keyboard then. And I suggest not limit the guesture to four directions, / and \ are the same simple. So i usually use 7 directions' (bug in StrokeIt, \ up never got recognized) combinations.
Hey maybe there could be an option before you install it so it can like search your computer for the applicable programs or you can just check off the programs you would like to include, just so everythings not so messy. When i open my little StrokeIt page, I just see all those unneeded programs and go BLAH, ya know? Especially when there's an explorer, and internet explorer. They're the same thing on my computer. lol? well whatever, if u wanna get to the big deal (BILL GATES), it should be more customizable and easy to work with. Good luck! :)
-^- Brian
The problem with scanning the system for installed applications is that they may not be installed in the same locations, may not have the same filenames, may not have the same checksums, etc.
And, making all of the default Applications options in the installer makes the list of options rather large. I'll look into it, though.
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