Re: scroll bar and drop down list usability

[famrom idecnet com (Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero)]

>So don't blame the concept. The concept is very sound. *But* 
>not all wheel mice are equal. I've found OEM mice lacking in 
>quality. Problem is, most people try cheap models, usually 
>the f*-up intellimouse, and then complain wheel mice are 
>hopeless. They are not. Just use the right ones.

<personal>
I tried a cordless and a wire one, both original Logitech. And I did not
like any of them, specially since I use mouse middle click a lot (Gimp,
Blender, paste, and I scroll using Next / Prev Page in text mode). I have
original Pilot mouses with three real buttons, and I am happy with all of them.

It is just a question of personal likes, I like three real buttons, not
small middle one. I also like old IBM "battle ready" keyboards (mechanical,
heavy has hell), semi fat heavy pens (try Rotring Trio Tech Pen), and other
things that people find old, stupid, ugly, or whatever you want to say.
</personal>

The theme is that forcing the use of the wheel, and forgeting those that are
wheeless (maybe even only two buttons, maybe even one) is stupid, specially
when problems are 2D or 3D, and wheel is 1D. We should^Wmust find a good
solution that does not need new hardware and works with lots of apps, the
target must be the 90%, not the 10%. Of course, I do not say that wheel must
be useless, it should be used to do something (scroll? ;] ) but that must be
the secondary thing. The point is a better way to scroll without wheel (and
using wheel as extra tool if avaliable).

For now, the ideas seem to be middle to scroll, and keep the scroll bars for
those users that do not know about joystick / hand scrolling (hand is more
object like, more "real world", but joystick works better for big docs), and
to give feedback about where you are (like desktop pagers). The arrows could
be placed in the thumb. Any better ideas?

The task here is to brain storm, so GUI Team can have feedback from a group
of users and then choose / test / implement. Uuumm... some Projects of the
Week could try to implement what we say here (the arrows in thumb would be
great, ie). IIRC a guy was trying to test menu and submenu speeds / shapes
with a small app already.

GSR