On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:39:46 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

Indeed. The single mouse button on a Mac doesn't lead to a more
efficient UI design - it instead leads to what I've heard described as
"Shift-Ctrl-leg-in-the-air-Click", IYSWIM.

That something like the funniest description for programming VMS I read
recently.

75% Data structures
10% Interrupts
10% Code
5% Tibetan prayer wheel.


Or you can commit macophile heresy and plug a 3 button wheel mouse in.



greg

--
Yeah - straight from the top of my dome
As I rock, rock, rock, rock, rock the microphone

Mrs Redboots wrote:
Ian Tindale wrote to uk.transport.london on Tue, 25 Jan 2005:


Also, if you go to 'Tools' 'Extensions' there's plenty you can add to the
basic Firefox.

I've got Chatzilla (for irc) and Sage (for rss (don't ask - I'm not entirely
clear what rss is, myself)).


Nor am I, but I think it's to do with live websites - you can, for
instance put a "live bookmark" for BBC News on it, and the headlines in
the bookmark update themselves automagically throughout the day, which I
find quite remarkable.

Or (shameless plug!) you could even subscribe to my news and updates
feeds on my website :-) For example, if you add my news feed to it,
headlines will come every so often on it and you can click straight
through to the news article I originally discovered.

However, I prefer the implementation in Firefox's sister program, the
Thunderbird mail+news client. You can subscribe to RSS feeds there, and
new articles come up like emails in dedicated inboxes.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Neil Williams writes:
Indeed. The single mouse button on a Mac doesn't lead to a more
efficient UI design - it instead leads to what I've heard described as
"Shift-Ctrl-leg-in-the-air-Click", IYSWIM.

At this point I am reminded of an American car I rented a few years
ago. It happened that I had some time to kill while sitting in the
car, so I started reading the manual. I learned that one of the car's
fancier features -- which I will not explain here -- had four different
settings, to be selected according to the owner's preference.

The thing is that the designers must have wanted to avoid the expense
of providing a separate four-position switch for a feature whose setting
would hardly ever be changed once it was set initially (probably by the
dealer). But they also wanted it to be impossible to change the setting
by accident in normal driving.

So what you had to do to advance the option setting by N steps in its
cycle was this, starting with the engine stopped:

[1] Turn the ignition key to the "on" position (not "start").
Then:
[2] With your left hand (driver's seat is on the left, remember),
hold down the door-lock button in the armrest.
[3] With your foot, hold down the brake pedal.
And simultaneously:
[4] With your right hand, move the automatic transmission out of
Park and back into Park -- N+1 times!

At least, that's what it said in the manual. I didn't actually try it.
I didn't try pressing Control-Alt-Delete either. :-)
--
Mark Brader | "...being permitted to propel a ton of steel through
Toronto | public places at speeds of up to 33 m/s is not a
| fundamental human right in my book" -- Paul Ciszek

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Mark Brader ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were
saying :

I learned that one of the car's
fancier features -- which I will not explain here

Please do! Sounds, erm, esoteric...

Huge wrote:

Don't try and convince a Mac zealot of that, though.

I don't think there's much danger of that. We all know it's ridiculous only
having one (or no) button - even those that have never tried a proper
mouse. Fortunately, it works very well with proper after-market USB
many-buttoned scroll-wheel mice (and can even be made left-handed with
various software).

--
Ian Tindale

On 26 Jan 2005, Huge wrote:

(Neil Williams) writes:

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:21:30 +0000, Dave Arquati
wrote:

That's what people get when they choose design over... erm... multiple
mouse buttons. I depend heavily on all three of mine...

Indeed. The single mouse button on a Mac doesn't lead to a more
efficient UI design - it instead leads to what I've heard described as
"Shift-Ctrl-leg-in-the-air-Click", IYSWIM.

Don't try and convince a Mac zealot of that, though.

DIE, WINFIDELS!!!

it's actually pretty rare to do anything other than a plain click (or a
shift- or command- click to do multiple selections, as on a PC).
command-clicking for tabs and control-clicking for context menus are about
it. i can't think of any multiple-modifier clicks. i wish they'd swap
command and control, though - it feels much more sense to use
command-click for menus, given that the command key is already something
to do with menus. it feels almost blasphemous to use it for simple
multiple selection!

IMNERHO, the nastiest hack is actually the way older versions of Netscape
did context menus - click and hold.

"ctrl-alt-meta-cokebottle"

there's nowt wrong wi' meta!

tom

--
Know who said that? ****ing Terrorvision, that's who.

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Mark Brader wrote:

So what you had to do to advance the option setting by N steps in its
cycle was this, starting with the engine stopped:

[1] Turn the ignition key to the "on" position (not "start").
Then:
[2] With your left hand (driver's seat is on the left, remember),
hold down the door-lock button in the armrest.
[3] With your foot, hold down the brake pedal.
And simultaneously:
[4] With your right hand, move the automatic transmission out of
Park and back into Park -- N+1 times!

Good god. Was this car by any chance designed by the people who do
beat-'em-up video games? That lot sounds remarkably reminiscent of some of
the tricker moves from Street Fighter II ...

tom

--
Know who said that? ****ing Terrorvision, that's who.

wrote in message
oups.com...
John Rowland

I am not convinced that the station
names should be coloured at all,

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. I didn't intend
that station names should be coloured,

I know, I was criticising the map, not anything you had suggested.

I'd propose a slightly different model,
in which each London terminal was given a colour,

Only lines which cross need to have different colours. (The LU lines are an
exception, because their colours are a given.)

You know, it's five years since I made that map on
your site, and I find I'm still obsessing over this stuff.
I wonder if I have a syndrome of some sort.

As soon as a psychologist finds people like you interesting, you suddenly
acquire a syndrome. I wouldn't worry about it.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

John Rowland wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

John Rowland

I am not convinced that the station
names should be coloured at all,

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. I didn't intend
that station names should be coloured,


I know, I was criticising the map, not anything you had suggested.


I'd propose a slightly different model,
in which each London terminal was given a colour,


Only lines which cross need to have different colours. (The LU lines are an
exception, because their colours are a given.)


You know, it's five years since I made that map on
your site, and I find I'm still obsessing over this stuff.
I wonder if I have a syndrome of some sort.


As soon as a psychologist finds people like you interesting, you suddenly
acquire a syndrome. I wouldn't worry about it.

I do sometimes wonder if some weird syndrome will be discovered to
explain away my unhealthy fascination with transport. I already have a
solution, though... try to turn it into a job!

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Neil Williams wrote:

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:21:30 +0000, Dave Arquati
wrote:

That's what people get when they choose design over... erm... multiple
mouse buttons. I depend heavily on all three of mine...

Indeed. The single mouse button on a Mac doesn't lead to a more
efficient UI design - it instead leads to what I've heard described as
"Shift-Ctrl-leg-in-the-air-Click", IYSWIM.

Apart from when you're playing minefield, it doesn't usually lead to a
less efficient UI design either. Most Mac browsers give you a contextual
menu if you hold the mouse button down for half a second. I think the
alternative of control clicking only came about because someone noticed
the control key was hardly ever used...

And I *like* my context menus, as a former Acorn RISC-OS user
(superbly intuitive UI, and 3 mouse buttons!).

If you want 3 mouse buttons, all you have to do is get a three button
mouse. But unlike mice (where extra buttons are slightly useful) I find
trackpads are much more convenient with a single button.