BTT accomplishes all of this by circumventing the entire concept of the mouse as you knew it.īack in the dark ages of computing when mice were still a novel concept, they couldn't do more than point-and-click. It solves every problem that the mouse created. The mouse, coupled with modern desktop OSes and applications, promotes frustration.īTT makes all of these problems go away. Although the mouse offers the resolution to differentiate between these UI elements, humans don't have nearly the dexterity to quickly move the mouse and land on small targets in quick succession. How many times have you clicked on the button next to the one you wanted, such as "Don't Save" instead of "Save"? How many times have you clicked "X" instead of Minimize? How many times have you clicked on Chrome instead of Mail?īecause the mouse offers 1 pixel of accuracy (the human finger offers 50-70 pixels of accuracy), PC OSes and applications have been designed with UI elements that are only a few pixels apart. So that means you have to incessantly move the mouse across the entire screen, and make sure that your mouse lands on a small target every time. In both OSX and Windows, the 3 primary window management controls (red/yellow/green and minimize, de-full screen, and X) are at the top of the screen, and the primary application management tools are at the bottom of the screen by default (Dock and Task Bar). To make matters worse, you often have to click at opposite ends of the screen. I probably click 4-5x as much as the average user, putting me over 2000 clicks per day. I couldn't find any well-crafted studies but the preliminary Google results suggest 472. I Googled to find the average number of mouse clicks per person per day. Every few seconds, people demand something new of their computer: open a new email, send an email, open file browser, select a folder, select another folder, select another folder, copy, switch to another application, paste. But today, hundreds of millions of people spend all day sitting in front of a PC. This worked well when you couldn't do much with a computer, and when you didn't spend all day sitting at a computer. The original conception of a computer mouse was based on this principle. If you want to show your friends something cool, just point. If you see something of interest, you'' point. It's fundamental to human interaction and communication. How do most 1-year-old children express that they want something? They point. But before we get into the details of BTT, let's look at the evolution of the computer mouse. BTT allows you to map any recognizable gesture to any system command or keyboard in OSX, at the global or application-specific level. This post will focus on another free OSX app, BetterTouchTool (BTT). Step 5: Under Predefined Action, select Controlling Other Applications → Open Application, and select the application that you wish to assign to the gesture selected in the previous step.In my first post of this 3 part series, I detailed why Alfred extends the PC keyboard into the ultimate productiivty tool. Step 4: Under Touchpad Gesture, select your desired trackpad gesture. Step 3: Click Global under Select Application. Once you have BetterTouchTool downloaded and installed, you can follow the steps below to create an easy-to-use app-launching gesture. It’s a paid app with a free 45-day trial, and as one of the deepest third-party utilities available for the Mac, it’s worth donating and acquiring a license. OS X features several handy native trackpad gestures aimed at controlling your Mac, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to launch or open your favorite app with a simple trackpad gesture? In this post, we’ll show you how to easily wield BetterTouchTool in order to do just that.īetterTouchTool is an app that brings a wealth of new options and settings to many of the Mac’s various input devices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |