Where is the new mouse?

Many people advocate the use of only the keyboard in the computer and they argue that it is much faster than using the mouse. This is indeed true to some extend. Using a keyboard can be a good idea to increase your productivity in some cases. But not in the Internet. And not when using your graphics editor. And not when skipping to an arbitrary time in your media player. And not in many other cases.

The computer mouse is an essential part of our technology lifestyle, and there is no escape from that. The mouse is not going anywhere in the near future.

But the mouse comes with a set of some serious usability issues. The biggest problem is that the mouse is a separate device, an extra device other than the keyboard and it needs a hand specifically for using it. But the keyboard needs the user to dedicate both of his hands to use it. And thus we are in serious trouble. We have to switch our hands between the keyboard and the mouse and balance the act perfectly to get our things done.

I have always had the feeling that the mouse and the keyboard should be combined into one more usable device, or make the mouse-keyboard transition smoother. But I am not in favor of the unusable trackballs or touch-pads either. It is not essential that we invent a new device that does the job of both. But if we can do that, it is the best solution. But I don’t foresee any change in this field for a reasonable time. So we will have to concentrate on making he existing mouse-keyboard configuration more productive.

The main problem with the mouse is that it does not have sufficient number of buttons. Most of us usually use two button mouse with a scroll-wheel that can work as a third button too. And we have seen that the scroll-wheel is an excellent addition to the mouse. There are some gaming mice that have extra buttons, but they are of no use for other purposes. But what we actually want is not some cute buttons for firing your secondary weapon in Quake 4. We want some highly useful buttons that help very much in increasing the productivity of a user.

I think that it will be better if I could have the Enter or Return button on the mouse. An enter button is different from the single click. A single click sends the command to the control which the mouse pointer is currently pointing to. The Enter button sends the command to the default control or the highlighted control in the active window. Having this button would really help users to dismiss many dialog boxes and other forms that pop-up every now and then in every application they use.

I have encountered a series of dialog boxes that must be dismissed to do some simple task in many common applications. That is the reason why I think it is essential to have e Return button on the mouse. Not that I am pressing for a return button. Rather, would like to have any change that makes using the keyboard-mouse combo more usable.

What worries me is that even after so many years, there is very little change that happened to the mouse other than the scroll-wheel and the optical motion detector. Now it is time for an innovation; we must add some more buttons to the mouse. Yes, we have been using sophisticated input mechanisms like the keyboard and the mouse for so many years now and I strongly feel that some extra buttons on the mouse is what we can perfectly get along with.