Simple but could work wonders:

Laptops mostly have a touchpad for moving these days, below a rectangular keyboard which is mostly crammed into a space equal to or slightly smaller than the screen.

Annoyingly it's often necessary to 'stroke' the touchpad a few times to move the mouse cursor large distances on the screen.

Given that the screen and keyboard can be thought of as roughly the same dimensions (give or take a little aspect ratio adjustment) how about a system whereby pressing the laptop's mouse button in conjunction with a keyboard key takes the cursor quickly to a point relative to that on the screen?

Ie. press button plus '1' takes you to top left. Press button plus bottom right shift key takes mouse cursor to bottom right of screen.

This would make moving your mouse cursor large distances a lot faster and involve no extra hardware.

Combined with a little extra software you could make the cursor jump to the only viable destination in that area (like a 'Submit' button or something). There may be other enhancements too.

To avoid loosing your cursor on large jumps it might be best to use this with software that enlarges the cursor when moved then quickly shrinks it back to normal size.
-- raintonr, Oct 25 2005

HP 9816 Workstation with cursor "wheel" http://www.old-comp...uter.asp?st=1&c=879
Of all the user interface devices I've used over the years, the flat wheel at the top of this keyboard that moved the cursor remains a favorite. [land, Oct 25 2005]

USB Etch-a-sketch Controller [elhigh] suggested it here in 2005 and [wagster] posted it as a proper idea in 2009 [notexactly, Apr 09 2019]

I would rather use a mouse with an extra button to do that .
-- kamathln, Oct 25 2005


You could probably do this with a Kensington mouse - they have all sorts of things you can tie together with mouse, click and keyboard combinations, as well as mouse jumping.
-- DrCurry, Oct 25 2005


Mouse jumping?
When I was at secondary school, there was this craze for tiny skate-boards, of about key-fob size. The boys who bought in to this tried to develop their skilz by flipping them around and pulling off tricks which looked quite unimpressive to the uninitated.

I was hoping this idea would be related to that.
-- Loris, Oct 25 2005


About a thousand computing-years ago, I used an HP 9816 workstation whose keyboard featured a flat wheel (a rotary pulse generator, also called the "knob") in the upper-left corner, just above the function-keys that could be used to motor the cursor around the text-mode screen. It was amazingly efficient.

Because the knob was flat, textured, and had a slight rim, it was easy to park a finger on top and spin it very fast either way, moving the cursor horizontally. With shift, it moved vertically.

The fact that there was no limit, as there is with a mouse or trackpad, meant that it only took a second or two to move from anywhere on the screen to anywhere else, without taking your hands from the keyboard.

See the link section above for a picture of this ancient beauty.
-- land, Oct 25 2005


Go back to the joynipple between the GHB keys. It works like a charm on my Toshiba, with no overshoots like I get with touchpads.

Better yet, include two small knobs on the corners of the keyboard, and manuever the mouse a la Etch-a-Sketch!
-- elhigh, Oct 26 2005


Why not set it up so that the presence of two fingers on the pad would accelerate the movement?
-- ldischler, Oct 26 2005


[+]

DisplayFusion has a feature where you can set a (static) keyboard shortcut to jump the cursor to the next or previous monitor. That's not really similar to this, but it's what I thought of when I read the title.

This idea also reminds me of a trick you could do on old Mac laptops with trackpads (pre-multitouch): start moving your finger in a direction, then take it off the trackpad at the same moment as you touch the trackpad at a point further in the same direction (with another finger). This would convince the trackpad that you'd moved one finger infinitely fast between the two points, resulting in the cursor going all the way to the edge of the screen in that direction.

// About a thousand computing-years ago, I used an HP 9816 workstation whose keyboard featured a flat wheel (a rotary pulse generator, also called the "knob") in the upper-left corner, just above the function-keys that could be used to motor the cursor around the text-mode screen. It was amazingly efficient. //

That sounds awesome, and I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before. That's a feature to keep in mind for whenever I get around to building my own computer input knob for sure. (I'm planning to use a VCR head assembly.)

// joynipple between the GHB keys //

That phrase turned out a bit daterapey. I've never liked those anyway. They control cursor velocity rather than position, so it's harder to point accurately with them.

// Better yet, include two small knobs on the corners of the keyboard, and manuever the mouse a la Etch-a-Sketch! //

I'd try it: [link]

// Why not set it up so that the presence of two fingers on the pad would accelerate the movement? //

Because then how would you scroll? (Scrolling with one finger along the trackpad edge is a possibility, but that's never felt anywhere near as precise to me as two-finger scrolling.) (Two-finger scrolling and two-finger context menu clicking were introduced on the PowerBook G4 in 2005, so I guess I have to give you a pass on knowing about it back then.)
-- notexactly, Apr 08 2019



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