I’m writing software to drive an MPCNC and need a quick poll from people. The answers help me decide how the Zoom function will work on my software.
I’m trying to find out if your mouse has a scroll wheel in the middle and if it does, is it a clicky wheel or a silent wheel that doesn’t appear to have indentations. A clicky middle wheel mouse, such as the Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse V2 which mine is, has a middle wheel that clicks as you turn it. All the mice I have for PC’s are all Microsoft ones and all have click middle wheels. Even my Mac’s have Microsoft mice on them, so my sample set is poor. I have looked on the Intertubes and can’t get enough information to know if all, most, some or a few mice have clicky middle wheels.
All I want to know is:
Does your mouse have a clicky middle wheel? Yes/No
I don’t want any more information, not interested in make of mice or colour or style, just the middle mouse wheel. If you don’t have a middle wheel, that is important and the answer is No.
Simple Yes and No answers are important to me. I am hoping that most people have clicky wheels as that makes my life a little easier. Please don’t ask about Apple trackpads or Apple Magic Mice as I haven’t got my head around that yet, though I do have some in the cupboard.
I have a wheel, and it does NOT have detents. It’s a gaming mouse, and will happily spin for several seconds if I give it a good spin and lift my finger. It does have a button, though, so I have a MOUSE3 button click.
first i recommend creating a pole, you can do that in the forum to get the answers you want. i would also like to add the fact that my mouse has an option to do both. it is “clicky” and not based on another button. though i usual use it in “clicky” mode unless scrolling through a large document.
Thanks for that. Perhaps my mouse is my reason why I’m so rubbish at Battlefield 4. It must be that as I consider myself a gaming god (I’m laughing as I write this).
So I’m a little confused. By clicky do you mean about it having detents like @kvcummins doesn’t have, or that it clicks like a middle mouse button, or both?
For clarification, a clicky middle wheel means there are detents around the wheel so as you rotate the wheel, it clicks from one position to another. The detents (which is the word I should have used, thanks @Atom and @kvcummins) are sometime subtle but are clear to my fingers on my middle wheel. A non clicky wheel would simply turn and turn with no obvious clicks as it turns. I cannot remember using a freespinning middle wheel.
The reason for this is to try and work out how much my application should zoom when the middle wheel is turned. As my middle wheel has this subtle but clear detent when it moves, one click translates to one zoom level. If there is no click, it’s not so obvious to me how much to zoom in or out depending on how much the middle wheel turns.
As approx 30% of people (to date) have a non clicky wheel, I think that’s enough to make me think again about how to approach this. As an interim measure, I’m using ‘a’ and ‘z’ to zoom in and out and the current mouse position as the point to zoom in and out on. The mouse position is very important.
I have this working on the main canvas, it’s pretty simple but doing this with the top and left rulers is a real PITA.
I’ll be honest. I don’t think you want to tie the zoom to something physical like the mouse. Design it for some ‘theoretical’ value and then provide something in the settings to adjust the amount for the end user.
I’m not sure how many brands of mice there are out there, but I doubt they all use the same ‘value per click’. High end gaming mice are known for their higher resolutions. Not only for x-y but the scroll wheel as well.
Thats why I put this poll up and to canvas views. Its not eas easy as I would like it to be, though after saying that many applications use the mouse button for zooming in and out quite successfuly.
What I have managed to do today in between Skype meetings, is to implment zoom using the A and Z keys to zoom in and out. The zoom position is based on the mouse position, so all the code is there to use for a mouse wheel if I can make it work. I’ve also managed to get the rulers to zoom in and out in sync and to make it all work fast enough with 128 levels of zoom. The very last thing is to get the rulers to move to the zoom position centre which is where the mouse is. I suspect it’ll take a day or so to get that right.
I personally get annoyed when I go to scroll the mouse on my pc after the kids have played on it and they left the decent on. Otoh for my mpcnc I use a small 7” display with bcnc. Scroll zoom on bcnc is very sensitive where the detent does actually help if it is setup one step per click.
At least in linux, all wheel movements end up being buttons 4 and 5. Even from the touch pad.
You could add a “sensitivity” to the config, but really, the more decisions you make and fewer configs, the less maintenance you’ll have to do.
I would focus on making the zoom snappy. If it is, then the “proprioception” will be there and users will be able to adjust.
I personally use a track ball. When I hold one of the buttons, the whole ball becomes a scroll wheel. It feels natural in pretty much any scroll or zoom situation.
The sensitivity bit and configuring it is the area that worries me. I have no idea what each mouse puts out, my mouse does a movement of 4 for every detent when I sample it. The next mouse could do 1,2, 10 or 20 OR it may be that OS X normalises it to a number or the driver does and Linux does something else and Windows 10 does something else.
I can see an awful lot of work here simply to capture mouse wheel movement which is not moving the software forward in any meaningfull sense.
After thinking about this, my current plans are to have a keyboard Zoom In and Zoom Out key press which zooms in and out at the current mouse position. At the moment I’m using ‘a’ and ‘z’ as they are at the left side of the keyboard as my mouse is at my right hand. Of course left handed mouse users will need to be different (sigh). It’s not a major hassle to have a left and right handed configuration, just more work.
What I really want to do is get these rulers working properly as there’s an awful lot of tricky bits in it, that keep coming back to bite me. I just need a few (10-20 ) hours in a dark room with a damp towel on my forehead to get it right.
so thanks Cummins!