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Reader comments
Nick BurkaNov 21, 2003 at 11:39AM
Umm... I keep getting taken back to kottke.org because of the way I highlight words as I read. Annoying.
pbNov 21, 2003 at 12:26PM
Will more than 2% of the browsing public ever use mouse gestures? Ever??
dowingbaNov 21, 2003 at 1:14PM
They will when we tell them to! (By the way I think the site got kottke'd.)
jkottkeNov 21, 2003 at 1:32PM
No, it was linked on Slashdot this morning. I don't get enough traffic to bring anything down.
ericNov 21, 2003 at 2:03PM
I don't get enough traffic to bring anything down
yet...
DanNov 21, 2003 at 3:43PM
As discussed in the slashdot discussion, the potential for misuse of mouse-gestures by popup artists is huge. I should be able to disable this without having to disable *all* javascript.
dowingbaNov 21, 2003 at 11:00PM
Mouse gestures are cool, but I think implementing them on the server-side is the wrong way to go about it. Imagine this gets big: going to different websites you'd have no idea what's gonna happen when you move your mouse innocently. I hope this doesn't catch on. Let people decide whether they want to use mouse gestures.
Simon WillisonNov 22, 2003 at 1:10PM
Mouse gestures should be implemented as part of the browser, not as part of each individual website. Having them enabled for some sites and disabled for others is just plain confusing. In addition, the gestures on that site ended up intefering with the gestures I already have set up in my browser (Firebird, running gestures from http://optimoz.mozdev.org/ ).
I'm also bemused by the completely unsupported claim that "Websites that are 'MouseGestures Enabled' are safer for viewers.". You what? If anything adding the gestures on that page to your site is a huge security hole in that the author recommends you link in an external script hosted on his site, which opens you up to cross site scripting attacks should he (or someone who cracks his server) alter the script.
dowingbaNov 23, 2003 at 1:45AM
I think it's safer because you don't get tennis elbow moving your pointer allll the way over to the scroll bar. Too bad the mouse gestures seem to only cover moving to the absolute bottom or absolute top of the page...nowhere in between...and lots of people have mousewheels that make scrolling even easier than clicking and moving your mouse up-right-up-down-left-right-diagonal-down-down-right-up or whatever.
leonardNov 24, 2003 at 6:03AM
Gestures (click and drag) are definitely much more stressful than my normal method of navigation (mostly keyboard, occasionally mouse wheel for scrolling)
artoDec 07, 2003 at 7:14AM
Neat idea, but I agree that the browser is the best place to implement it.
(Besides which, it didn't work at all in Opera.)
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.