Web surfers can be categorized in two groups, (e.g., those mouse oriented and those keyboard oriented). It all depends on their skills and preferences to use a mouse or keyboard efficiently and effectively.
In my case, I’m a very good typist. I learned to type using a manual UnderwoodJurassic period. This helped me a lot when the personal computers splashed the market during the early eighties. Having said that, I still think the mouse is faster than the keyboard in many browsing activities. typewriter way back during the
Pie menus are used by many surfers to break the sound barrier on the Internet. A pie menu (sometimes called radial menu or marking menu) is a circular pop-up menu where selection depends on direction. A pie menu is made of several “pie slices” around an inactive center and works best with stylus input, and well with a mouse.
A goal of pie menus is to provide a smooth, reliable gestural style of interaction for novices and experts. A slice can lead to another pie menu; selecting this may center the mouse cursor in the new menu.
Pie menus are often context-sensitive, showing different options depending on what the mouse cursor was pointing at when the menu was requested. Pie menus are drawn as pie slices with a hole in the middle for an easy way to exit the menu.
I believe marking menu are the future replacement of the current right-click menu. You might ask, How so? The answer is simple, they place all of the needed commands in a circular ring around your mouse, instead of in a long menu. This gives you faster access to the commands that you need the most (previous page, next page, copy, paste, etc…) and, if designed correctly, would put your most-used commands at the root of the pie menu.
If you use a pie menu application, you will notice that the pie menu is capable of putting a lot of recurrent tasks immediately around the cursor, meaning you have to move your mouse a minimal distance to get to what you’re looking for. Lets take a real life example. Imagine that your cursor is at the top of the screen, and you want to switch applications. Right now you have to move your mouse all the way to the Taskbar on bottom of the screen just to do the switch (unless you use keyboard shortcuts). Having a pie menu available, lets you perform the switch in much less time than navigating all the way down to the Taskbar.
The name of the game is saving time by avoiding minimizing the mouse movements all over the screen, specially if you have a large monitor. Just wheel click your mouse and all your favorite functions will be right there. Click the function you want done and Voilá you’re done.
Now imagine a pie menu that not only contains your running applications, but also holds shortcuts to your favorite programs and your most used commands. A pie menu that adapts to your surfing needs would surely be a match made in Heaven.
I’ve been using for about six months, a pie menu application called easyGestures.Mozilla Firefox Add-on that has made me more productive while blogging. EasyGestures is pie menu that pops up inside the browser when you click the mouse and then let you perform various actions at the tip of the mouse pointer with minimum mouse movement. Actually, it’s a
The fast straight mouse gestures you perform this way save you from reaching toolbars, menus and keyboard and keep you from having to memorize any gestures. All behaviors and actions are customizable.
EasyGestures’ main features are:
- Three main pie menu views extended with 3 extra views, each with a different set of actions fully customizable.
- Customizable pie menu layout with many built-in actions.
- Possibility to launch external applications and execute scripts.
- Direct URL typing within the pie menu in its integrated location bar.
- Possibility to open your favorite bookmarks from the pie menu.
- Contextual pie menu behavior fully customizable.
- Specialized actions: site by site navigation, tagging of visited links, fast web search, daily readings.
- Statistics about pie menu usage (helps optimization).
- Transformation of the pie menu into a fully customizable linear menu.
- Triggering of actions by selection (for novice users) or stroke (for advanced users).
If you are currently using Mozilla Firefox and have the tendency to use your mouse more than your keyboard, this is your lucky Sunday. I encourage to give easyGestures a try and see if this is what you have been waiting for. Oh, only one more thing; please don’t drive too fast.
Another good news is that Ryan Wagner, the whiz kid of CyberNet has a “straight to the point” review of this application which will baby-step you through the different features of this productivity tool.
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