Re: WAKE UP CALL !-( mouse gestures

On Nov 25, 2003, at 1:53 AM, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
> Response to post please!

Perhaps if you explain your problem, people will be more likely to 
understand why they should respond.

> mouse gestures represents a potential problem similar to pop ups.

I can't see that big of a problem, as long as the keyboard and the 
mouse work as usual for typical tasks. Certainly not as big a problem 
as popups.

This doesn't interfere with the standard keyboard mechanisms, and 
doesn't interfere with clicking except with a click-and-drag operation. 
It prevents selecting text and right-clicking on my browser, and it 
fails to let me click on the links on the page in Firebird, but that's 
just universally bad design. Stupid? Absolutely. Broken? You bet. 
Inaccessible? Not necessarily. It would at least pass WCAG 1.0 
Checkpoint 8.1 at Priority 1 because the functionality is presented 
elsewhere (i.e., within the browser). And the left mouse button can be 
ignored when using this script, which should leave regular page 
interaction for most users.

I doubt many sites will see any benefit to introducing a feature that 
users won't understand, discover or use. Things like popups and CAPTCHA 
became a problem because companies had an economic benefit to 
implementing them, accessible or not. There is no such benefit to this 
"feature." It only does (poorly) with a mouse what is well-implemented 
via keyboard shortcuts in the browsers.

Of course, the place to implement gestures is in the user agent, where 
the user can configure it, or disable it. The big three browsers 
already have mouse gesture support built in or bolted on:

http://www.opera.com/features/mouse/
http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/
http://www.myie2.com/html_en/tour/02mousegesture.htm

-
m

Received on Tuesday, 25 November 2003 12:57:56 UTC