Just when you thought it was time to abandon the mouse altogether and start using only the command line, the OpenSource world has come up with a mouse with one zillion buttons that allows one-handed use of OpenOffice apps and plays World of Warcraft.
Orvieto, Italy, November 6, 2009 - In partnership with the OpenOffice.org community, WarMouse announced the release of the OpenOfficeMouse, the first multi-button application mouse designed for the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. With a revolutionary and patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, the OpenOfficeMouse is intended to provide a faster and more efficient user interface for OpenOffice.org applications such as Writer and Calc than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit. ... "You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first," said mouse designer Theodore Beale. "You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button. In Writer and Calc, you can have your most powerful and complicated macros on one row of buttons and simple functions like Bold, Undo, and Format Cell on another. It's very useful in games like World of Warcraft, because even without taking the joystick into account, you've got 16 commands within one click, 40 within two, and all 72 icons on the six action pages within just two double-clicks or less."
Comments
Wait, this is Vox Day Theodore Beale, isn't it? No wonder the thing makes me twitch.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | November 9, 2009 1:03 PM
Yeah, that's really going to boost productivity. What happened to the voice interface now...?
Posted by: IanW | November 9, 2009 1:07 PM
Ah, Vox Day. Living proof that geniuses can get wholly mired by the religion mind-virus as easily as anyone else.
Posted by: Jason Thibeault | November 9, 2009 1:09 PM
Because moving your hands from the keyboard to the gorram mouse and back again is so much better than using the control, shift, and alt keys. vi users everywhere must revolt and prevent yet another encroachment on our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to not have to take our MF hands away from the GD keyboard!!1!1eleventy-one!!1
Posted by: Shawn Smith | November 9, 2009 1:59 PM
Henceforth, OpenOffice.org will be known as ObsessiveCompulsiveOffice.org
Posted by: The Mad LOLScientist, FCD | November 9, 2009 2:10 PM
Greg a few days ago you actually said something negative about emacs. Now this. Are you taking your meds regularly?
Henry
Posted by: henry harpending | November 9, 2009 2:21 PM
I'm sorry, Henry, I'm just having a hard time with my dot emacs file. I'm sure things will be better later. Don't make me take the pills again.
Posted by: Greg Laden | November 9, 2009 2:27 PM
OK, I looked up Vox Day. Ick.
Using the OpenOffice mouse would be like ...
using hair gel designed by William F. Buckley ...
Posted by: Greg Laden | November 9, 2009 2:31 PM
Ah, a mouse for masochists who don't get enough of the stinkin' keyboard shortcuts screwing up absolutely everything when a single key is accidentally tapped while typing rapidly.
Posted by: MadScientist | November 9, 2009 4:30 PM
I'm waiting for the one that supports chording.
Posted by: flynn | November 9, 2009 8:35 PM
It figures an obsessively hateful person like Vox would come up with a hideously clumsy solution for a problem that doesn't even exist. Does he even understand the concept of a mouse to begin with? Or a right-click for that matter?
All I can say is this: if an application could conceivably have any use at all for eighteen buttons on a mouse, the interface designer fucked up hard and should be exiled to Mitnickland for fear of contaminating future code by just using it.
Posted by: BrianX | November 10, 2009 12:19 AM
Brian:
You ever done any drafting on a computer? Buttons are made by god. If she existed.
Control-click, though, to bring up a contextual menu is a lot more elegant than buttons you can't reach.
Posted by: Michael Spencer | November 10, 2009 7:17 AM
Who uses a joystick+mouse in WoW anyway?
Posted by: rpsms | November 10, 2009 11:29 AM
Please note, OpenOffice has NOTHING to do with this, and does not want to be associated with WarMouse, as it is now called.
Posted by: fyi... | March 4, 2010 7:01 PM
Not that anyone will see this by now, but...
Michael Spencer:
You do realize that if you need that many buttons, maybe a mouse is not the right input device for what you're doing, right? I seem to recall that back in the Elder Days, Atari made a trackball console thingy for the 5200 that might be a lot closer to the device you want.
Posted by: Brian X | March 20, 2010 6:44 PM