Apple has today announced that they will be selling a new type of mouse, dubbed “Mighty Mouse.” In addition to having multiple buttons and touch sensitivity, Apple’s new mouse has a feature that infinite-canvas cartoonists have long hoped for: a Scroll Ball that enables users to scroll up, down, left, right, and every place in between.
“Mighty Mouse” is both Mac and PC compatible.
Well, let’s take a look at the infinite canvas comic Ping came up with for a recent Comixpedia issue. As you’re reading it, you might notice that all the scrolling involved is a little cumbersome; you have to click, pause, move the mouse a little, click again, move the mouse some more, click again, etc (indeed, the most common complaint I hear about “infinite canvas” comics is “too much scrolling”. Some cartoonists try to get around this by using a flash interface or some similar bit of cleverness, but those have their own set of issues). All this activity makes the comic less immersive because you’re constantly getting hung up by navigation issues.
The new scroll ball feature may help to eliminate that problem by allowing the user to scroll through the comic with the simple flick of the fingertip, no fuss, no muss. But, it’s certainly fair to be skeptical at this early date.
Well, while say Microsoft Intellimouse has the ability to scroll sideways I assume that it is the way that the apple mouse claims to be able to do it that is special.
“But getting from point A to point B doesn’t always mean traveling in a straight line. Take a spin on the mouse that’s not afraid of kitty-corner. With Mighty Mouse’s Scroll Ball, you can scroll at a 45-degree angle — even roll in 360-degree sweeps. Pan across a massive digital image in iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop. Take in a whole PDF in Preview. The Scroll Ball moves the content on your screen just as your eyes might move across a printed page.”
I personally find the Intellimouses sideways scroll to be of limited use, but if the Mighty Mouse works the way I imagine it I would find it very handy (especially since I have a small screen and do a fair amount of photoshop work).
This… doesn’t get rid of the ‘too gorram much scrolling’ problem. It gets rid of the ‘have to center click and pray your hypersensitive mouse doesn’t fly away’ problem, but you’re still having to do all the annoying scrolling inherent to IC.
Besides, its nothing new. There’s a number of trackball mice on the market that a) aren’t apple designed and b)are much, much, much cheaper.
That makes more sense.
Because… we… can’t… do that… now?
I wanna say that I really, really, REALLY like Comixpedia’s looking at outside news stories with an eye to how they might influence webcomics. It’s a GREAT POLICY, and I want to see it continue.
But I’ve looked at the link, and while it’s easy to understand how the mouse works, I’m not sure I understand what makes it so much better than my current model, for IC comics or otherwise. Can somebody clear this up for me?