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On 7/2/2020 at 4:30 PM, Quenz said:

almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

 

You bring up a lot of points here.  The short version is I both agree and disagree with you.  I'm going to focus on some parts I think you may not have thought out as thoroughly, so it might seem like I'm being overly negative, but just assume the stuff I'm NOT bringing up I more or less agree with you:

Quote

And I have to say that it's solely because the mouse is not being used. Mice are bad. Mice are absolutely terrible.

The reason mice are terrible is a matter of basic facts about human brains, hands, eyes and muscles. Hell, I think Jef Raskin covered it.

Keyboards present fewer possible discrete options. Mice present a continuum. One can be operated blind; the other requires feedback.

You cannot use a mouse without using your eyes to confirm everything.

 

I think we actually both agree that mouse TARGETS are awful.  One line I left out of the video is that ideally, if you knew what you were doing, you should be able to navigate a GUI blind.  You're claiming this isn't possible on the mouse.  Under NORMAL circumstances, you're correct.  This is why I was so excited about mouse gestures.  You CAN use those blind!  I would postulate it's not the mouse itself that's the problem, so much as how we've designed the GUI to use it.  If "using the mouse" only meant a series of rapid swipes that you could literally do blindfolded, I think we would have far closer parity to the keyboard.  I'm probably not changing your mind, but I wanted to try to plant the seed that the way mouse is used now doesn't have to be the end-all.  I think simply as a pure peripheral, it has more potential than you've giving it credit for, even though I'm in agreement most of what we have now is awful.

Quote

To be clear, the web as I envision it does not look like what we have. Not one bit. It's completely different.

And it's worth noting that HYPERTEXT, specifically, is best with a mouse in a lot of cases. Wikipedia would suck on keyboard.

This is a FANTASTIC example of a mouse-optimal document. Any keyboard approach would be mediocre at best.,

See, that might show the difference in philosophy in our approaches.  I think we both recognize there's a problem, but I see changing what the web looks like as a lost cause, I look at that as ceded ground; I'm not going to win that battle.  So the best I can do is find the most efficient options to adapt to the world we have before us.  That world means that if you're having a mouse, SOME tasks will be faster, even though I'm completely with you that even the ones as that are faster may not be as fast as they theoretically COULD be, however if that ONLY works and theory and can't adapt to the real world, then that's something I write off.  Sometime like a random website is something I'll never have control over, so I need to find tools on MY end to interact with it faster.

A final point I think you're missing:

Even in your perfect world where you had full control over the development software, I think there would STILL be functions that would be faster via a mouse.  This comes to visual manipulation in particular.  I work a lot with multimedia.  Say I need to resize an image, but I don't know exactly what the dimensions should be, I need to see it in front of me to know what's just right.  Say I need to scan a video and find the exact point, but I don't know where on the timeline it is, I need to scan until I find the exact point.  Sure, with a keyboard, I can press arrow keys one at a time, or skip by 10% or 10 frames, etc, but it's going to be a tedious process and depending on how close I am, I'm probably tapping the keys 20 times or more to get the image or video position JUST right.  Unless there's something I haven't though of, the keyboard is ill-suited to these types of tasks regardless of how the software is designed.

You said it yourself: the mouse is a continuum.  It hits every single point in its path and be can used similarly to an analog device, which a lot of multimedia simply has a need for.

So for me personally, because I can never escape this AND we live in a mouse oriented world, going full-keyboard just isn't the answer for maximum efficiency, because my workload is too diverse.  If it's a more limited situation like what you were describing, yes, keyboard only + a full redesign could be the fastest option.  Anyway, I'll talk about this in the followup video.

On 7/2/2020 at 4:30 PM, Quenz said:

almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

 

You bring up a lot of points here.  The short version is I both agree and disagree with you.  I'm going to focus on some parts I think you may not have thought out as thoroughly, so it might seem like I'm being overly negative, but just assume the stuff I'm NOT bringing up I more or less agree with you:

Quote

And I have to say that it's solely because the mouse is not being used. Mice are bad. Mice are absolutely terrible.

The reason mice are terrible is a matter of basic facts about human brains, hands, eyes and muscles. Hell, I think Jef Raskin covered it.

Keyboards present fewer possible discrete options. Mice present a continuum. One can be operated blind; the other requires feedback.

You cannot use a mouse without using your eyes to confirm everything.

 

I think we actually both agree that mouse TARGETS are awful.  One line I left out of the video is that ideally, if you knew what you were doing, you should be able to navigate a GUI blind.  You're claiming this isn't possible on the mouse.  Under NORMAL circumstances, you're correct.  This is why I was so excited about mouse gestures.  You CAN use those blind!  I would postulate it's not the mouse itself that's the problem, so much as how we've designed the GUI to use it.  If "using the mouse" only meant a series of rapid swipes that you could literally do blindfolded, I think we would have far closer parity to the keyboard.  I'm probably not changing your mind, but I wanted to try to plant the seed that the way mouse is used now doesn't have to be the end-all.  I think simply as a pure peripheral, it has more potential than you've giving it credit for, even though I'm in agreement most of what we have now is awful.

Quote

To be clear, the web as I envision it does not look like what we have. Not one bit. It's completely different.

And it's worth noting that HYPERTEXT, specifically, is best with a mouse in a lot of cases. Wikipedia would suck on keyboard.

This is a FANTASTIC example of a mouse-optimal document. Any keyboard approach would be mediocre at best.,

See, that might show the difference in philosophy in our approaches.  I think we both recognize there's a problem, but I see changing what the web looks like as a lost cause, I look at that as ceded ground; I'm not going to win that battle.  So the best I can do is find the most efficient options to adapt to the world we have before is.  That world means that if you're having a mouse, SOME tasks will be faster, even though I'm completely with you that even the ones as that are faster may not be as fast as they theoretically COULD be, however if that ONLY works and theory and can't adapt to the real world, then that's something I write off.  Sometime like a random website is something I'll never have control over, so I need to find tools on MY end to interact with it faster.

A final point I think you're missing:

Even in your perfect world where you had full control over the development software, I think there would STILL be functions that would be faster via a mouse.  This comes to visual manipulation in particular.  I work a lot with multimedia.  Say I need to resize an image, but I don't know exactly what the dimensions shoud be, I need to see it in front of me to know what's just right.  Say I need to scan a video and find the exact point, but I don't know where on the timeline it is, I need to scan until I find the exact point.  Sure, with a keyboard, I can press arrow keys one at a time, or skip by 10% or 10 frames, etc, but it's going to be a tedious process and depending on how close I am, I'm probably tapping the keys 20 times or more to get the image or video position JUST right.  Unless there's something I haven't though of, the keyboard is ill-suited to these types of tasks regardless of how the software is designed.

You said it yourself: the mouse is a continuum.  It hits every single point in its path and be can used similarly to analog device, which a lot of multimedia simply has a need for.

So for me personally, because I can never escape this AND we live in a mouse oriented world, going full-keyboard just the answer for maximum efficiency, because my workload is too diverse.  If it's a more limited situation like what you were describing, yes, keyboard only + a full redesign could be the fastest option.  Anyway, I'll talk about this in the followup video.

On 7/2/2020 at 4:30 PM, Quenz said:

almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983

 

You bring up a lot of points here.  The short version is I both agree and disagree with you.  I'm going to focus on some parts I think you may not have thought out as thoroughly, so it might seem like I'm being overly negative, but just assume the stuff I'm NOT bringing up I more or less agree with you:

Quote

And I have to say that it's solely because the mouse is not being used. Mice are bad. Mice are absolutely terrible.

The reason mice are terrible is a matter of basic facts about human brains, hands, eyes and muscles. Hell, I think Jef Raskin covered it.

Keyboards present fewer possible discrete options. Mice present a continuum. One can be operated blind; the other requires feedback.

You cannot use a mouse without using your eyes to confirm everything.

 

I think we actually both agree that mouse TARGETS are awful.  One line I left out of the video is that ideally, if you knew what you were doing, you should be able to navigate a GUI blind.  You're claiming this isn't possible on the mouse.  Under NORMAL circumstances, you're correct.  This is why I was so excited about mouse gestures.  You CAN use those blind!  I would postulate it's not the mouse itself that's the problem, so much as how we've designed the GUI to use it.  If "using the mouse" only meant a series of rapid swipes that you could literally do blindfolded, I think we would have far closer parity to the keyboard.  I'm probably not changing your mind, but I wanted to try to plant the seed that the way mouse is used now doesn't have to be the end-all.  I think simply as a pure peripheral, it has more potential than you've giving it credit for, even though I'm in agreement most of what we have now is awful.

Quote

To be clear, the web as I envision it does not look like what we have. Not one bit. It's completely different.

And it's worth noting that HYPERTEXT, specifically, is best with a mouse in a lot of cases. Wikipedia would suck on keyboard.

This is a FANTASTIC example of a mouse-optimal document. Any keyboard approach would be mediocre at best.,

See, that might show the different in philosophy in our approaches.  I think we both recognize there's a problem, but I see changing what the web looks like as a lost cause, I look at that as ceded ground; I'm not going to win that battle.  So the best I can do is find the most efficient options to adapt to the world we have before is.  That world means that if you're having a mouse, SOME tasks will be faster, even though I'm completely with you that even the ones as that are faster may not be as fast as they theoretically COULD be, however if that ONLY works and theory and can't adapt to the real world, then that's something I write off.  Sometime like a random website is something I'll never have control over, so I need to find tools on MY end to interact with it faster.

A final point I think you're missing:

Even in your perfect world where you had full control over the development software, I think there would STILL be functions that would be faster via a mouse.  This comes to visual manipulation in particular.  I work a lot with multimedia.  Say I need to resize an image, but I don't know exactly what the dimensions shoud be, I need to see it in front of me to know what's just right.  Say I need to scan a video and find the exact point, but I don't know where on the timeline it is, I need to scan until I find the exact point.  Sure, with a keyboard, I can press arrow keys one at a time, or skip by 10% or 10 frames, etc, but it's going to be a tedious process and depending on how close I am, I'm probably tapping the keys 20 times or more to get the image or video position JUST right.  Unless there's something I haven't though of, the keyboard is ill-suited to these types of tasks regardless of how the software is designed.

You said it yourself: the mouse is a continuum.  It hits every single point in its path and be can used similarly to analog device, which a lot of multimedia simply has a need for.

So for me personally, because I can never escape this AND we live in a mouse oriented world, going full-keyboard just the answer for maximum efficiency, because my workload is too diverse.  If it's a more limited situation like what you were describing, yes, keyboard only + a full redesign could be the fastest option.  Anyway, I'll talk about this in the followup video.