Mouse (computing)
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Image:Mouse-mechanism-cutaway.png
Image:First Computer Mouse pic 2.jpg
A mouse is a handheld pointing device for computers, being a small object fitted with one or more buttons and shaped to sit naturally under the hand. The underside of the mouse houses a device that detects the mouse's motion relative to the flat surface on which it moves. The mouse's 2D motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on the display.
It is called a mouse primarily because the cord on early models resembled the rodent's tail, and also because the motion of the pointer on the screen can be mouse-like.
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Mice
Early mice
MOUSE = Machine Operator's Unique Spotting Equipment
The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute in 1963 after extensive usability testing. It was also called the bug, but eventually this was dropped in favor of mouse. It was one of several experimental pointing devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS), which was both a hardware and software system. The other devices were designed to exploit other body movements—for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose—but ultimately, the mouse won out because of its simplicity and convenience.
The first mouse was bulky and used two gear wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel was translated into motion along one axis in the plane. Engelbart received patent US3541541 on November 17, 1970 for an "X-Y Position Indicator For A Display System". At the time, Engelbart intended that users would hold the mouse continuously in one hand and type on a five-key chord keyset with the other.
Mechanical mice
A later variation on the mouse, invented in the early 1970s by Bill English at Xerox PARC, replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. The ball's motion, in turn, was detected using perpendicular wheels housed inside the mouse's body. This variant of the mouse resembled an inverted trackball and was the predominant form used with personal computers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Xerox PARC group also settled on the modern technique of using both hands to type on a full-size QWERTY keyboard and grabbing the mouse as needed.
Modern computer mice took form at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the inspiration of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud and the hands of engineer and watchmaker André Guignard. A spin-off of EPFL, Logitech, launched the first popular mice.
The major movement translation techniques are by optical, mechanical and inertial sensors.
Optical mice
Image:Mouse-patents-englebart-rid.png Image:Opto mouse sensor.jpg An optical mouse uses a light emitting diode and photodiodes to detect the movement of the mouse pad rather then moving parts as in a mechanical mouse.
Early optical mice, such as those invented by Steve Kirsch of Mouse Systems Corporation, could be used only on a special metallic-surface printed with a grid of fine blue and grey lines. As computing power grew cheaper, it became possible to embed more powerful special-purpose image processing chips in the mouse. This advance enabled the mouse to detect relative motion on a wide variety of surfaces, translating the movement of the mouse into the movement of the pointer, eliminating the need for a special mouse pad. This advance paved the way for widespread adoption of optical mice.
Modern surface-independent optical mice work by using an optical sensor to take successive pictures of the surface the mouse is operating on. Most of these mice use LEDs to illuminate the surface that is being tracked; LED optical mice are often mislabeled as "Laser Mice", probably because a red LED is used in almost all optical mice, and the laser color many people are most familiar with is red. Changes between one frame and the next are processed by the image processing part of the chip and translated into movement on the two axes using an optical flow algorithm. For example, the Agilent Technologies ADNS-2610 optical mouse sensor processes 1512 frames per second: each frame is a rectangular array of 18×18 pixels, and each pixel can sense 64 different levels of gray.
Optomechanical mice detect movements of the ball optically, giving the precision of optical without the surface compatibility problems, whereas optical mice detect (relative) movement of the surface by examining the light reflected off it.
Laser mice
Image:Computer.mouse.750pix.jpg In 2004, Logitech, along with Agilent Technologies, introduced the laser mouse with its MX 1000 model. This mouse uses a small laser instead of an LED. The new technology can increase the resolution of the image taken by the mouse. The companies claim that this leads to a 20x increase in the sensitivity to the surface features used for navigation compared to conventional optical mice (see interference). Gamers have complained that the MX 1000 does not respond immediately to movement after it is picked up, moved, and then put down on the mouse pad. Newer revisions of the mouse do not seem to suffer from this problem, which is a power-saving feature. (Almost all optical mice, laser or LED based, also implement this power-saving feature, except those intended for use in gaming, where a millisecond of delay is significant.) Since it is a wireless mouse, the engineers designed it to save as much power as possible. In order to do this, the mouse blinks the laser when in standby mode (8 seconds after the last motion). This function also increases the laser life.
As early as 1998, Sun Microsystems provided a laser mouse with their Sun SPARC Station servers and workstations.
Optical versus mechanical mice
Image:Optical mouse shining.jpg Optical mice supporters claim optical rendering works better than mechanical mice, requires no maintenance and lasts longer due to fewer moving parts. Optical mice do not normally require any maintenance other than removing debris that might collect under the light emitter, although cleaning a dirty mechanical mouse is fairly straighforward too.
Mechanical mice supporters point out that optical mice generally cannot track on glossy and transparent surfaces, including many commercial mouse pads, causing them to periodically "spin" uncontrollably during operation. Mice with less image processing power also have problems tracking extremely fast movement, though high-end mice can track at 1 m/s (40 inches per second) and faster.
Power conservation is typically not an issue for cabled mice, and a typical cabled optical Microsoft Mouse draws 100 mA at 5 V, versus the 25 mA (or less) at 5 V of many opto-mechanical cabled mouses. Currently, mechanical mice boast lower power usage, which is advantageous for self-powered wireless mice running off batteries. A wireless mechanical mouse may draw an electrical current of 5 mA or less, whereas a wireless optical mouse typically draws 25 or more mA to power an LED or laser diodeTemplate:Citation needed. For wireless products, this requires periodic battery changes or re-charges perhaps rendering wireless mice unsuitable for critical or continuous work.
As optical mice render movement based on an image the LED reflects, performance on multi-coloured mousepads may be unreliable. However, they will outperform mechanical mice on uneven, slick, squishy, sticky or loose surfaces, and generally in mobile situations where mouse pads are not available.
Health hazards of optical mice usage
The careless usage of optical or laser mice risk serious injuries to the eye. Looking at LED can cause lesions to the retina, particularly the fovea or macula.
Inertial Mice
Inertial mice are usually cordless to support their main feature of mobility. Movement in two or three axes is registered using a gyroscope for every axis supported. A switch is often used to activate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user more freedom of movement without moving the pointer.
Buttons
In contrast to the motion-sensing mechanism, the mouse's buttons have changed little, varying mostly in shape, number, and placement. Engelbart's very first mouse had a single button; this was soon increased to three. Commercial mice usually have between one and three buttons, although in the late 1990s some mice sprouted five or more.
Most popular are mice with two buttons. The most common purpose for the second button is to invoke a contextual menu in the computer's software user interface, which contains options specifically tailored to the interface element over which the mouse was positioned. This is used by the popular Microsoft Windows operating system in its default configuration, as well as many other operating systems. By default, the primary mouse button is located on the left hand side of the mouse, for the benefit of right handed users.
On systems with three-button mice, pressing the center button (a middle click) is often used as a convenience to map the action to a commonly used action, or a macro. In the X Window System, middle clicking pastes the contents of the primary buffer at the pointer's position. Many two-button mice are configured to emulate a three-button mouse by clicking both the right and left buttons simultaneously. Middle-clicks are often used as a spare button in case a function is not allocated easily.
Additional buttons
Mice have been built with five or more buttons. Depending on the user's preferences, the extra buttons may allow forward and backward web navigation, scrolling through a browser's history, or other functions. As with similar features in keyboards, however, these functions may not be supported by all software. The additional buttons are generally more useful in computer games, where quick and easy access to a wide variety of functions (for example, weapon-switching in first-person shooters) can be very beneficial. Because mouse buttons can be mapped to virtually any function, keystroke, application or switch, they can make working with such a mouse more efficient and easier to use.
Douglas Engelbart's view of the optimal number of buttons was "as many as possible". The prototype that popularised the idea of three buttons as standard had that number only because "we couldn't find anywhere to fit any more switches".
Wheels
One major innovation in mouse buttons was the scroll wheel: a small wheel, with its axis parallel to the mousing surface, that can be rotated "up" or "down" to provide immediate one-dimensional input. Usually, this input is translated into "scrolling" up or down within the currently selected window. This is especially helpful in navigating a long document. The scroll wheel can often be pressed straight down, replacing the third (center) button. Doing so often activates autoscrolling in the Windows operating system (if an application supports it). Some newer mouse models allow horizontal as well as vertical scrolling. Some designs make use of a "rocker" button instead of a wheel—a pivoting button that can be pressed at the top or bottom, simulating up and down respectively. The wheel can also be used with some software applications to zoom in and out by holding down the Control key (Ctrl) on the keyboard and scrolling either up or down. Applications that include this functionality include Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox.
A more advanced form of the mouse wheel is the tilt-wheel, found on some of the higher-end Logitech and Microsoft mice. Tilt wheels are essentially conventional mouse wheels that have been modified with a pair of sensors articulated to the tilting mechanism. These sensors are mapped, by default, to horizontal scrolling.
In 2005, the Apple Mighty Mouse introduced a third variety of built-in scrolling device. It contains a scroll ball, which is essentially a small trackball embedded in the upper surface of the mouse, and is used like a two-dimensional scroll wheel.
3D Mice
In the late 1990s, Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons. The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station. Despite a certain appeal, this mouse was discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.
Connectivity and communication protocols
Image:Bluetooth Mouse.jpg Like all input devices, mice need some connection to the host computer in order to transmit their input. Typical mice use a thin electrical cord plus a connector (e.g. RS-232C, PS/2, ADB or USB) for this purpose. Cordless mice use wireless communication transmit data via infrared, radio, or Bluetooth.
The format of the data transmitted by commonly availably mice has in the past varied between different manufacturers and also depends on the type of electrical interface used.
PS/2 mouse protocol
Starting with the introduction of the IBM PS/2 personal computer series in 1987, mice for IBM compatibles became increasingly connected via a round 6-pin mini-DIN connector. The connector, pin assignment, and low-level serial format are the same as the one used by a PS/2 keyboard. For any motion, button press, or button release event, a PS/2 mouse sends over its bi-directional serial port a sequence of three bytes, with the following format:
| D7 | D6 | D5 | D4 | D3 | D2 | D1 | D0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Byte 1 | YV | XV | YS | XS | 1 | MB | RB | LB |
| Byte 2 | X movement | |||||||
| Byte 3 | Y movement | |||||||
Here, XS and YS are the sign bits of the movement vectors, XV and YV indicate an overflow in the respective vector component, and LB, MB and RB indicate the status of the left, middle and right mouse button (1 = pressed). PS/2 mice also understand several commands for reset and self-test, switching between different operating modes, and changing the resolution of the reported motion vectors.
A Microsoft Intellimouse initially uses the same format for backwards compatibility. After the host sent a special command sequence, it switches to an extended format, where a fourth byte carries information about wheel movements and two more buttons.
Apple Desktop Bus
Image:Apple Macintosh Plus mouse.jpg In 1986 Apple first implemented the Apple Desktop Bus allowing up to 16 devices, including arbitrarily many mice, to be daisy-chained together. Featuring only a single data pin, the bus used a purely polled approach to computer/mouse communications and survived as the standard on mainstream models until 1998 when the iMac began a switch to USB. The Powerbook G4 retained the Apple Desktop Bus for communication with its built in keyboard and trackpad until early 2005.
Common button uses
There are several methods of input using a mouse, aside from the most basic moving of the device to make the pointer move.
A mouse click is the action of pressing (i.e. clicking) a button on a mouse in order to trigger an action, usually in the context of a graphical user interface (GUI) (pressing an onscreen "button" by clicking on it) or computer game (to fire a gun in a first-person shooter). The reason for the clicking noise made is due to the specific switch technology used nearly universally in computer mice. This switch is called a microswitch, or cherry switch, and uses a stiff but flexible metal strip that is bent to actuate the switch. The bending of the metal makes a snapping or clicking noise, in the same way as the safety button on the lids of vacuum packaged jars to indicate they have been opened. As to why the clicking sound is used, researchers have found that when pressing a button audible feedback, in addition to tactile feedback, gives a better response to the user.
Single clicking
This is the most common method of distinguishing mouse-based input. On single-button mice this involves using the mouse's one button. On multiple-button mice, it involves one of the buttons and is usually characterized by which button is pushed (e.g. left-clicking, right-clicking). See point-and-click.
Double-click
A double-click occurs when the user presses the button twice in quick succession. This usually triggers an action separate from that of a single-click. For example, in the Macintosh Finder a user may single-click to select a file, and double-click to open that file. Usability studies have found that the double-click can be confusing and hard to use—for example, users with poor motor skills may not perform the second click soon enough after the first, causing the action to be registered as two single-clicks rather than a double-click. (Ironically, the double-click was introduced because the previous solution—separate mouse buttons for separate actions—was found to be confusing in user studies.) Most multiple-button mice allow setting one button to emit a double-click on a single press. Modern operating systems allow users to set the maximum interval in which the two clicks need to be made to register as a double-click.
Multiple clicking
Multiple clicks occur when the user presses the button several times in quick succession. This triggers an action separate from that of a single or double click. The triple click, for example, can be seen in word processors such as Microsoft Word and web browsers to select a whole section (e.g. a line or paragraph) of text. Professional desktop publishing applications such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign also utilize quadclicks (4 clicks to select a paragraph) and pentaclicks (5 clicks to select the entire story).
Chords
A chord occurs when two or more mouse buttons are pressed at the same time. It is rarely used in standard interfaces. The X Window system has an option to emulate a middle mouse button with the simultaneous click of the left and right mouse buttons.
Click-and-drag
Once a user has clicked on an object, they can often drag the object by continuing to hold down the mouse button whilst moving the mouse.
Mouse gestures
Main article: Mouse gestures
A mouse gesture is a way of combining mouse movements with clicks, to indicate a software-specific command.
Today, Drag-and-Drop (DND) is considered a requirement for commercial-quality applications. On most operating systems, support for DND is built-in, so everybody uses it and all programs can communicate with each other.
Tactile mice
In 2000, Logitech introduced the tactile mouse, which contained a small actuator that made the mouse vibrate. Such a mouse could be used to augment user interfaces with haptic feedback, such as giving feedback when crossing a window boundary.
Other unusual variants have included a mouse that is held freely in the hand, rather than on a flat surface, and detects six dimensions of motion (the three spatial dimensions, plus rotation on three axes). It was marketed for business presentations when the speaker is standing or walking around. So far, these mouse exotica have not achieved widespread popularity.
Mouse speed
Mouse speed is often expressed as DPI (dots per inch). The DPI is intended to be the number of pixels the mouse cursor will move when the mouse is moved one inch. However, software tricks like changable mouse sensitivity can be used to make a cursor move faster or slower than its DPI, and cursor acceleration can be used to make the cursor accelerate when the mouse is moving at a constant speed. This makes "DPI" a confusing term [1]; a replacement term, CPI (counts per inch), has been suggested by Apple and several other designers.
A less common unit, the "Mickey" (named after Mickey Mouse), is a measure of distance reported by a mouse. It is not a traditional unit of measurement because it indicates merely the number of "dots" reported in a particular direction. Only when combined with the DPI of the mouse does it become an indication of actual distance moved. In the absence of acceleration, the Mickey corresponds to the number of pixels moved on the computer screen.
Additionally, operating systems traditionally apply acceleration, referred to as ballistics, to the motion reported by the mouse. For example, versions of Windows prior to Windows XP doubled reported values above a configurable threshold, and then optionally doubled them again above a second configurable threshold. These doublings were applied separately in the X and Y directions, resulting in very nonlinear response. In Windows XP and many OS versions for Apple Macintosh computers, a smoother ballistics calculation is used that compensates for screen resolution and has better linearity.
Mice or mouses?
There is a fake etymology of the word mouse, which some claim is an acronym for "Manually Operated User Selection Equipment", but the device's name came from its resemblance to a mouse and was established very early on. A Microsoft technical manual recommends the use of "mouse devices" to avoid ambiguity, though this usage has not caught on outside technical writing. The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language, Fourth Edition, states that "computer mice" and "computer mouses" are both proper plural forms for "computer mouse." "Mice" is the generally accepted plural term.
Accessories
Mousepad or Mousemat
Template:Main The mousepad is the most popular mouse accessory available, and is used with most mice. It provides a smooth surface for the mouse to move across, as many desks are not suitable, and hard wood or plastic surfaces wear down mouse feet covers faster. Specialized hard mousepads are made for gamers. Most optical mice do not require a mouse pad, as they are designed to be used on any flat surface. A mousepad is sometimes required when using optomechanical mice, because the ball requires the extra friction of the mousepad to roll smoothly. Many mousepads feature artistic designs, photographs, logos, or other decoration.
Mouse foot covers
Mouse foot covers (or foot pads) are made from low-friction or polished plastic. This makes the mouse glide with less resistance over a surface. Some higher quality models have Teflon feet to further decrease friction.
Cord managers
Accessories for managing the cord of a mouse come in different forms, but they all help manage excess cord length on mice to keep it from getting in the way.
Wrist rests
Cushioning pillows made from silicone gel, neoprene, or other spongy material are also a popular accessory. The padding provides for a more natural angle of the wrist which is aimed at reducing fatigue and excessive strain.
Mice in the marketplace
In the 1970s, Xerox PARC included mice with its Xerox Star. Later, inspired by the Star, Apple Computer released the Apple Lisa, which also used a mouse. However, neither the Star nor the Lisa were commercially successful. Only with the release of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 did the mouse first see widespread use.
The Macintosh design was influential, and its success led many other vendors to begin producing mice or including them with their other computer products. The widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces in the 1980s and 1990s made mice indispensable for computer use. By 2000, Dataquest estimated that US$1.5 billion worth of mice were sold annually worldwide.
Alternative mice
Apart from the regular mouse that is operated by the hands, other mouse variants exist. These cater to those who may have an injury resulting from excessive mouse usage, or to people who feel uncomfortable with traditional designs. Some of these include:
- Trackball – user moves a ball mounted in a fixed base.
- Mini-mouse – a small egg-sized mouse optimized for portability (often used with laptop computers).
- Camera mouse – a camera tracks the head movement and moves the onscreen cursor. Natural pointers track the dot on a person's head and move the cursor accordingly. They are more precise than a camera mouse.
- Palm mouse – held in the palm and operated with only 2 buttons; the movements across the screen correspond to a feather touch, and pressure increases the speed of movement.
- Foot mouse – a mouse variant for those who do not wish to or cannot use the hands or the head; instead, footclicks are used.
- Joy-Mouse – A cross between a joystick and a mouse, the joy mouse is held in an upright position like a joystick but moved like a normal mouse. The thumb usually controls the clicking on a two-way button on the top of the mouse.
Applications of mice in user interfaces
Usually, the mouse is used to control the motion of a cursor in two dimensions in a graphical user interface. Objects, such as files, programs, or actions, can be selected from a list of names, but, alternatively, are often represented visually by pictures called icons and buttons; the mouse cursor can be used to select or activate items by moving the cursor over the name or picture and pressing one of the mouse buttons. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a piece of notebook paper, and clicking on this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a new window. (See also point-and-click.)
Mice can also be used gesturally; that is, a stylized motion of the mouse cursor itself can be used as a form of input. In a gestural interface, a particular gesture (stylized motion) may be mapped to an action. For example, in a drawing program, moving the mouse in a rapid "x" motion over a shape might delete the shape.
Gestural interfaces are rarer, and often harder to use, than plain pointing and clicking, because they require finer motor control from the user. However, a few gestural conventions have become widespread, including the drag-and-drop gesture, in which:
- The user presses the mouse button while the mouse cursor is over an object;
- Holds down the button while moving the cursor to a different location;
- Releases the mouse button.
This motion is commonly used to move the item from one location to another—the item is dragged from its old location and dropped in its new one. For example, a user might drag and drop a picture of a file from a folder onto a picture of a trash can, indicating that the file should be deleted.
Other uses of the mouse's input are common in special application domains. In interactive three-dimensional graphics, the mouse's motion is often directly translated into changes in the virtual camera's orientation. For example, in the Quake computer game, the mouse is usually used to control the direction in which the player's "head" faces: moving the mouse up will cause the player to look up, revealing the view above the player's head.
When mice have more than one button, software may assign different functions to each button. Often, the primary (leftmost in a right-handed configuration) button on the mouse will select items, and the secondary (rightmost in a right-handed) button will bring up a menu of alternative actions applicable to that item. For example, on platforms with more than one button, the Mozilla web browser will follow a link in response to a primary button click, will bring up a contextual menu of alternative actions for that link in response to a secondary-button click, and will often open the link in a new tab or window in response to a click with the tertiary (middle) mouse button.
One, two or three mouse buttons?
Image:Apple mouse Pro.jpg The issue of whether a mouse should have exactly one button or more than one has attracted a surprising amount of controversy. From the first Macintosh until late 2005, Apple shipped computers with a single-button mouse, whereas most other platforms used a multi-button mouse. Apple and its advocates argued that single-button mice are more efficient, and that multi-button mice are confusing for novice users. The Macintosh user interface is designed so that all functions are available with a single button mouse. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines still specify that all functions need to be available with a single button mouse. However, X Window System applications, which Mac OS X can also run, were designed with the use of two or even three button mice in mind, causing even simple operations like "cut and paste" to become awkward. Mac OS X natively supports multi-button mice, so many users of older Macintoshes choose to use third-party mice on their machines. On August 2, 2005, Apple introduced their Mighty Mouse multi-button mouse, which has four independently programmable buttons and a "scroll ball" which can be used to scroll in any direction. This is now the mouse supplied with all new Macintosh computers.
Advocates of multiple-button mice point out that support for a single button mouse often leads to clumsy workarounds in interfaces where more than one action may be useful for a given object. There are several common workarounds, and even widely used Macintosh software packages that otherwise fully conform to the Human Interface Guidelines, including web browsers and graphics editing programs, occasionally require the use of one of them.
One such workaround is the press-and-hold technique. In a press-and-hold, the user presses and holds the single button, and after a certain period, the button press is not perceived as a single click but as a separate action. This has two drawbacks: first, as with double-clicking, a slow user may press-and-hold inadvertently. Second, the user must wait while the software detects that the click is actually a press-and-hold, otherwise their press might be interpreted as a single click. Furthermore, the remedies for these two drawbacks conflict with each other: the longer the lag time, the more the user must wait; and the shorter the lag time, the more likely it is that some user will accidentally press-and-hold when meaning to click.
Alternatively, the user may be required to hold down a key on the keyboard while pressing the button (otherwise known as mouse chording - Macintosh computers use the ctrl key). This has the disadvantage that it requires that both the user's hands be engaged. It also requires that the user perform two actions on completely separate devices in concert; that is, pressing a key on the keyboard while pressing a button on the mouse. This can be a very daunting task for a disabled user. Studies have found all of the above workarounds less usable than additional mouse buttons for experienced users.
Most machines running Unix or a Unix-like operating system run the X Window System which almost always requires a three button mouse. In X, the buttons are numbered by convention. This allows user instructions to apply to mice or pointing devices that do not use conventional button placement. For example, a left handed user may reverse the buttons, usually with a software setting. With non-conventional button placement, user directions that say "left mouse button" or "right mouse button" are confusing. The ground-breaking Xerox Parc Alto and Dorado computers from the mid-1970s used three-button mice, and each button was assigned a color. Red was used for the left (or primary) button, yellow for the middle (secondary), and blue for the right (meta or tertiary). This naming convention lives on in some SmallTalk environments, such as Squeak, and can be less confusing than the right, middle and left designations.
Newer mice have a scroll wheel between two buttons, and pressing the scroll wheel acts as a middle mouse button (button two). In addition, mice with five or more buttons can be useful in several environments. Microsoft's Intellimouse is the best-known of these mice, but other brands exist and are often preferred due to the bulk of some Intellimice. The extra buttons are most frequently used in browsing the web or navigating with a file browser.
Mice in gaming
Mice are often used as an interface for PC-based computer games and sometimes for video game consoles. They are often used in combination with keyboards. In arguments over which is the best gaming platform, the mouse is often cited as a possible advantage for the PC, depending on the gamer's personal preferences.
First-person shooters
A combination of mouse and keyboard is a popular way to play first-person shooter (FPS) games. The X axis of the mouse is used for looking left and right, while the Y axis is used for looking up and down. The left mouse button is usually for primary fire. Many gamers prefer this over a gamepad or joystick because it allows them to turn quickly and have greater accuracy. The right button is often used for secondary fire of the selected gun, if the game supports multiple fire modes. A scroll wheel is used for changing weapons. On most FPS games, these functions may also be assigned to thumb buttons. A keyboard is usually used for movement (for example, WASD, for moving forward, left, backward and right, respectively) and other functions like changing posture. Since the mouse is used for aiming, a mouse that tracks movement accurately and with less lag will give a player an advantage over players with less accurate or slower mice.
Any early technique of players was circle straffing, where a player could continously straff while aiming and shooting an opponent by walking in circle around the opponent with the opponent at the centre of the circle. This could be done by holding down a key for straffing while continuously aiming the mouse towards the opponent. Circle straffing has lost much of its popularity.
Invert mouse setting
In many games, such as first or third person shooters, there is a setting called "invert mouse" or similar. It allows the user to look downward by moving the mouse forward, and upward by moving the mouse backward (the opposite of the default setting). This control system is similar to aircraft control sticks, where pulling back causes pitch up and pushing forward causes pitch down; this control configuration is also typically mimicked in computer joysticks.
After id Software's Doom, the game that popularized FPS games, but which did not support vertical aiming with a mouse (the y-axis was used for forward/backward movement), competitor 3D Realms' Duke Nukem 3D was one of the first games that supported using the mouse to aim up and down. It and other games using the Build engine had an option to invert the Y-axis (moving the mouse forward aims up, moving the mouse backward aims down). The "invert" feature actually made the mouse behave in the way that we now regard as normal. Soon after, id Software released Quake which introduced the invert feature as we know it now. Other games using the Quake engine were released and kept this feature. Probably because of the overall popularity of Quake, this became the current standard.
Super Nintendo
In the early 1990s, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game system became the first commercial gaming console to feature a mouse in addition to its controllers. The best-known game to have used the mouse's capabilities was Mario Paint.
See also
- Trackball
- SpaceBall
- Touchpad, also known as trackpad
- Pointing stick
- Computer accessibility
- Mousepad
- Footmouse
- Mouse gesture
- Repetitive strain injury
External links
- Of Mice and Zen: Product Design and Invisible Innovation, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (.PDF file)
- Razer - Manufacturers of the world's most popular computer gaming mice.
- Everglide
- The Earliest Computer Mouses
- Primary Material on the Apple Mouse
- How Computer Mice Work
- Optical Mice and how they Work (PDF)
- Optical Mouse technology review: Tech specs on current optical mice
- the House of Mouse (Gaming)
- A review of a modern laser-based mouse: the MX1000
- SRI mouse
- MouseSite including 1968 demonstration
- The PS/2 mouse interface – Detailed description of the data protocol, including the Microsoft Intellimouse wheel-and-five-buttons extensions
- The PS/2 mouse – a chapter on the PS/2 mouse protocols
- Serial-port mouse protocols
- PC mouse information – some information on mouse interfaces and communication protocols
- Gyration - a popular Inertial Mouse brand
- HwB: Atari Mouse/Joy Connector
- Using a mouse as a scanner
- Logitech
Multiple cursors
- Toolglass and Magic Lenses: The See-Through Interface
- CPNMouse allows developers to use more than one pointing device in Windows 2000/XP applications, while maintaining backward compability with old applications.
- Supporting Children’s Synchronous Collaboration
- Multiple Mouse Cursors — Blog with comments and links
References
- Agilent Technologies (2004). ADNS-2610 Optical Mouse Sensor. (pdf format) Retrieved 2004-11-16.
- Squeak Wiki (16 March, 2004). FAQ: Mouse Buttons. Revision 24. Retrieved 2004-11-17.
- Inertial mouse system, United States Patent 4787051
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