Mice buttons

**eatinglemur** · 06-13-2005

You know, I noticed an interesting trend with buttons on mice; you can really tell a lot about a system's target user by simply having a look at the GUI.

MacOS: 1 button
Windows: 2 buttons
unix: 3 buttons

Now, all three of those systems support all the other types of mice, but the point I'm trying to make is that each system is designed to work best with that many buttons on the mouse. I think that says something for the complexity of the interface and who exactly is meant to be using the system.

**Curlydave** · 06-13-2005

Not sure if I see the connection.

**d38dm8nw81k1ng** · 06-13-2005

i think he is makng a comment on the quality of a product being related to how many buttons the mouse uses. however this is invalid as windows is the worst OS ever. unless it is about what sort of people use them. go on news.com and see what i mean. the mac zealots are psychotic. i suppose it goes: Penguins>Sheep>OSX Zealots

**Curlydave** · 06-13-2005

Originally Posted by d38dm8nw81k1ng

i think he is makng a comment on the quality of a product being related to how many buttons the mouse uses. however this is invalid as windows is the worst OS ever. unless it is about what sort of people use them. go on news.com and see what i mean. the mac zealots are psychotic. i suppose it goes: Penguins>Sheep>OSX Zealots

Nope, no Linux Zealots around.

**jlgreer1** · 06-13-2005

I only grudgingly started to use mice back when the first GUIs came out. I was happy (still prefer) a command line. GUIs are just a waste of resources. Thank goodness resources double and prices halve every year or so! What's that laws name? What would I do without the right and left button and the scroll wheel center button. When are they going to come out with foot pads?

I have used cpm, dos, mac, win, and various nix operating systems and interfaces..... Linux is the best, IMHO.

Apple could have done a lot better if they hadn't alienated most of the computer world by having a different mouse and keyboard configuration. Whenever I have to use an Apple product I have to relearn where the home keys are. (They misplaced the little indicator bumps!)

Jeff

**eatinglemur** · 06-13-2005

Well, what I wanted to say was that the number of buttoms seems to be related to the number of functions that the interface has, and a more complicated interface is inteded for a more experienced user. The correlation I see is between "user friendliness" and "number of mouse buttons."

**budman7** · 06-13-2005

The bad part about that is I read about people using Mice with 7/8 buttons in Windows.
Does that mean windows has more functionality, or that users are to lazy to move the mouse and clik on the Back Button on there browser.

**benjamin20** · 06-14-2005

when do you use three buttons in linux? i use xfce4 so i dont see any use for it. oh, wait, ya, i see it now. it brings up the multiple desktop mannager. i cant get over the fact that linux is a command line operating system but stil has the most advanced desktop system around. not to mention conservative. when i reboot and open up the desktop i only have 60mb of memory used. after firefox it goes up to about 70 but thats still a lot smaller than windozers 130 or so at boot. well. actualy when i used gnome on fc2 it did get to be around 95 at boot. but gnome and fc2 are a little bloated.(not all that terible, just not what im interested in) because see i have 256mb ram. so i need every little extra space i can get.

never seem to usethe swap though. very rare that i need to. i think linux just gets rid of old useles stuff in memory befor it tries to use the swap.

**jaboua** · 06-14-2005

Originally Posted by benjamin20

when do you use three buttons in linux? i use xfce4 so i dont see any use for it.

There are multiple uses... I have a mice with two buttons and a scrolling wheel which functionates fine as a third button to. And I have to say, it is VERY handy. You can scroll down pages, switch desktops, and the probably most used feature: copy & paste! It works like a kinda universial copy system, you can mark some text in firefox, open a terminal, press the mid mouse-button inside the terminal and suddenly all the marked text from firefox pasts, without any use of the keyboard or something... When I for some reason have to use windows (read: school), I just never seem to find out why it won't past

But I can see your comparisment... Some windows users use 8 buttons yeah, but that does'nt mean that the operative system supports it out of the box. Think about it, in windows you actually have to install drivers for your hardware manually, almost nothing comes with the OS

BTW, I never knew mac's had one button only... Have some of you also seen a picture of those really old mouses made in tree with only one thin, red button on it...

**eatinglemur** · 06-14-2005

Well, the users who use 8 buttons are the exception. I'm looking at more of a combination between what the norm is--what the computers ship with, what the interface seems geared towars, etc.

After all, MacOS X supports 2 button mice very well, I believe, and Windows will make use of a 3rd button when present.

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