The idea is simple: a mouse or trackpad with 4 or 5
buttons, each labeled with a number (1,2,3,4,5) in
addition to the usual right and left clickable mouse
buttons.
Why? If you use the same websites over and over again like
I do, merchants, banking sites, etc, you often just want to
get
to the textbox to enter some data and to the Submit
button.
If you prefer to use a keyboard as much as possible, you'll
find that on most sites you cannot easily press Tab to reach
the links, buttons or boxes mentioned above. You may have
to tab twenty times to reach the Submit button sitting
halfway down your screen.
You might press control-F and search for a link halfway
down the screen, but that is cumbersome and will not work
for text on buttons. (You can't search for "SUBMIT"). You
will probably give up and use the mouse to drag the cursor
to where you need it before going back to your keyboard.
Enter the Number Mouse. It would be fairly easy for web
designers to simply assign numbers to the most heavily
used links, boxes and buttons on a page. Of course, in
addition to the underlying code there would also have to
be a number displayed next to those screen buttons so that
you know which mouse number will bring you to which
place on the page.
For example, you reach a page that has your username
saved, but you need to enter your password, which isn't
stored. There's a red "3" next to the password input box on
your screen. You press the "3" on your Number Mouse, and
through the magic of HTML, your cursor is now in that box
and you can type your password. Yes, you still had to use
your mouse, but you didn't have to drag the cursor across
the screen. It's the next best thing to having a touchscreen
on which you could have touched the input box.
Why not just use keyboard commands to get to these
boxes? Not a bad idea, but these are usually taken up
between your operating system and your browser. If every
website were set up for keyboard commands like, say,
gmail, where you can hit 'c' to compose a new letter, that
might work.
The keyboard and special kbd commands have many uses.
The mouse has one use -- to navigate you to specific places
on the screen. Why not have some preset buttons to speed
things along?