

OpenOffice launches mouse with 18 buttons, 52 commands - swombat
http://openofficemouse.com/pr110609.html

======
evdawg
"The Mouse team have worked closely with experts from the OpenOffice.org User
Experience project."

Ah. Well that explains it.

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slapshot
The fact that people in this discussion aren't sure if it's a joke tells you
something about the OpenOffice experience.

Now all we need is some brash young designer to skin the default screen for
each program, tell OO to fire its whole experience staff because they
obviously can't tell their heads from their tails, and write a blog about it.

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bdr
They've found that almost everyone only uses two of the buttons -- but it's a
_different_ two for each person.

~~~
wmf
So it's a "long tail" mouse.

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DanielBMarkham
Is this a joke?

~~~
MikeCapone
If you had to ask, they've probably proven their point that there's something
wrong with a lot of Open Source software :)

~~~
rbanffy
Oddly enough, I never had any problems with OOo. It just works.

On the other hand, when my office's computers got bumped from MS Office 2003
to 2007, I saw a lot of people bitching about how difficult it was to find
stuff and making lots of Ray Charles with moving furniture jokes.

~~~
philwelch
After the initial "people are terrified of change and will resist it" though,
the ribbon turned out to be an improvement.

~~~
xtho
So when can I expect them to stop asking me where this or that function is
hidden in Office __2007__.

~~~
JBiserkov
As soon as you point them to the excellent interactive

Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide

<http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word/HA100744321033.aspx>

[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=904...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9044790B-4E24-4277-B714-66D7B18D0AA1)

Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 command reference guide

<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA101491511033.aspx>

[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=897...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=89718ABD-2758-47B3-9F90-93788112B985)

PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide

[http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/powerpoint/HA101490761033....](http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/powerpoint/HA101490761033.aspx)

[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BEF...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BEF41DC3-8E28-4282-82D4-CEC2F416CD40)

Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Command Reference Guide

[http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/outlook/HA102221621033.asp...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/outlook/HA102221621033.aspx)

[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CC3...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CC37CC1E-028D-4D30-9093-96CC6513ECA1)

The first link is the online version, the second - the standalone .exe

I always put a shortcut to those _above_ the shortcut of
Word/Excel/Power./Outlook, explain/show how to use them in 5 sec and my users
are happy!

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thegoleffect
A little late or early for April Fool's? O_o.

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endtime
With good software, this could be an interesting gaming mouse. Can't really
picture using it for office work though.

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yason
Thanks, but no thanks.

I'm still waiting for the Emacs mouse.

~~~
tspiteri
Emacsers don't use the mouse! Unless it has enough keys we can do without a
keyboard altogether, that is.

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nzmsv
It's like emacs for office users :)

~~~
gchpaco
Only if you're expected to chord three or more buttons on a regular basis.

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MaysonL
If this thing is for real, I'm going to buy one. I can see using it as a
chording keyboard (or at least trying to ;-}).

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pierrefar
Is this some kind of PR stunt or a real product? This sentence from the press
release smells of PR: "The OpenOfficeMouse includes default profiles for the
five core OpenOffice.org applications based on 662 million datapoints compiled
by the usage tracking facility incorporated into OpenOffice.org 3.1."

~~~
omouse
It's a joke? -_-'

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nrr
My hands hurt just looking at that damnable thing. I wouldn't be able to use
it for more than 10 minutes at a stretch because I'd end up losing all feeling
in my right hand.

... if I were a right-hand mouser to begin with, that is, all joking aside.

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windsurfer
I used to have a mouse that had some fancy buttons on it. I only attached two
crucial commands to the mouse: One button was a double click, one button was a
hide/unhide desktop. I couldn't figure out what to do with the other ones.

~~~
shalmanese
I have a MX Revolution and here's how I bind my buttons:

Left Click Right Click Middle Click (Open tab in new window) Double Click Copy
Paste Next Tab Previous Tab Close Next App Previous App

~~~
geocar
I bind mine to modifier keys, like Alt, and Super. Then I can chord-resize
windows and chord-drag them from the middle of the window without doing the
one-hand-keyboard-one-hand-mouse move.

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shaddi
The site seems to be slashdotted, here's a better link:
[http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/06/openofficemouse-isnt-
free...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/06/openofficemouse-isnt-free-isnt-
pretty/)

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some1else
I perform music on two Monome 64s and a Trigger Finger. That sums up to 144
buttons, of which 64 are used at all times. But there are only about 8
functional distinctions between those, so 18 mouse buttons is probably an
overkill.

However, If this is about the complexity of the Open Office user interface, I
don't see this joke contribute in any way, not even by vaguely pointing out
the flaws.

The developer mailing list is probably the best place to start a discussion.
The same amount of time that went into the OOMouse would have resulted in some
fine UI concepts.

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cnicolaou
It's not even wireless... This is definitely a joke. And what a timing, just
when Apple introduces the magic mouse with lots of movement functions.

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Concours
This sounds like a very bad Joke: "the OpenOfficeMouse is intended to provide
a faster and more efficient user interface" This is really a joke. Nightmare
for every user,a scandal for usability experts, if it at least looks good,
very ugly thing there for $ 74.99 ? Com'on folk, most of us only have 5
fingers/per hand....18 buttons???. It's a joke!

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b-man
Well, it is probably a joke, but anyone familiar with Engelbart's mother of
all demos would certanly see a vague similarity ...

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jsz0
It's obviously unusable for 99% of the world but I could see it being useful
in very specific tasks. For example, large amounts of data processing that
requires template responses/codes, warehouse processing, maybe point of sale?

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chadaustin
Anyone remember those old CAD mice from the 80s? With the custom mousing
surface, region-sensitive reticle, and 12+ buttons on the mouse? Those things
were so cool...

~~~
joe_bleau
Do you mean a digitizer, or a mouse?

The digitizers were impressive, but we later switched to a multibutton mouse
for AutoCAD (circa R12 for DOS). I think it had 8 auxiliary buttons in a 4x2
grid, along with the primary left and right button. They were great for
AutoCAD, as you could put a different osnap on each aux button, but the
company disappeared before writing a windows driver.

I still have one around here, somewhere...

~~~
chadaustin
Hm, I think I meant a mouse. I remember it had a grid of buttons (each with a
different purpose, like a ColecoVision controller) and a really elaborate
mousing surface.

What brand was the mouse you're talking about?

~~~
joe_bleau
Found it--it's a Prohance Powermouse 70. Looks like it has the standard
left/right buttons, plus 15 additional buttons. Normal config is F1-F10, plus
esc, ctrl, user, fn, and enter. The driver allowed you to customize it for
apps such as AutoCAD. Typical mechanical ball mouse guts, DE-9 serial
connector. Actually pretty high quality, as you'd expect for a CAD peripheral
back in the day.

Couldn't find an images online (I could take one if anyone is really
interested), but I did see that someone was trying to reverse engineer the
protocol:
[http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-e...](http://stuartl.longlandclan.yi.org/blog/2006/03/03/reverse-
engineering-project-driver-for-the-prohance-powermouse-70/)

chadaustin's mention of a custom mousing surface makes me think he was looking
at a digitizer, although it could have been an old school optical mouse, such
as the ones Sun used to use.

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urlwolf
Somewhere now, S. jobs is having thoughts of approaching this mouse and pop
out all buttons but one with a keyring :)

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rlachenal
Even if this turned out to be a real product, they'd probably just claim that
it was just a joke now.

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vollmond
i could see this being good for gaming, but if you're enough of a power office
user to remember these buttons, won't you just be using the keyboard shortcuts
anyway, thus never needing the mouse?

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dw0rm
lol, why not to release a full-feature QWERTY mouse :D

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ekiru
I actually want one.

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kuda
Oddly the site doesn't seem to mention if the mouse is compatible with Solaris
or OpenSolaris.

