Saturday, 23 August 2014

Benefits of Attending The Seo Conference In Vegas











Tuesday, 12 August 2014

Mouse (computing)




The earliest known publication of the term mouse as a computer pointing tool is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".[1] The net Oxford Dictionaries entry for mouse states the plural for the little rodent is mice, while the plural for the little computer connected tool is either mice or mouses. However, in the use section of the entry it states that the more common plural is mice, & that the first recorded use of the term in the plural is mice as well[2] (though it cites a 1984 use of mice when there were actually several earlier ones, such as J. C. R. Licklider's "The Computer as a Communication Device" of 1968[3]). According to the fifth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language the plural can be either "mouses" or "mice"


The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a post-World War II-era radar plotting technique called Comprehensive Display Technique (CDS). Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service. Benjamin's project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several preliminary input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented a ball tracker[5] called roller ball[6] for this purpose.

The device was patented in 1947,[6] but only a prototype using a metal ball rolling on rubber-coated wheels was ever built[5] and the device was kept as a military secret.[5]


DATAR was similar in idea to Benjamin's display. The trackball used disks to select up motion, each for the X and Y directions. Several rollers provided mechanical support. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, producing pulses of output with each movement of the ball. By counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks, and sent the resulting knowledge to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project as well.

Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov. 1970, U.S. Patent three,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent three,835,464. Ball and rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent three,987,685

Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) invented his first mouse prototype in the 1960s with the help of his lead engineer Bill English.[10] They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and usually resembling the common mouse.[11] Engelbart seldom received any royalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.[12] The invention of the mouse was a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect by the Augmentation Research Middle.


A mouse usually controls the motion of a pointer in dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). The mouse turns movements of the hand backward and forward, left and right in to equivalent electronic signals that in turn are used to move the pointer.

The relative movements of the mouse on the surface are applied to the position of the pointer on the screen, which signals the point where actions of the user happen, so that the hand movements are replicated by the pointer.[22] Clicking or hovering (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an area) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical interfaces) through tiny images called "icons" and other elements. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper laptop, and clicking while the cursor hovers this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a window.

  Click: pressing and releasing a button.
    (left) Single-click: clicking the main button.
    (left) Click two times: clicking the button times in quick succession counts as a different gesture than separate single clicks.
    (left) Triple-click: clicking the button times in quick succession.
    (left) Quadruple-click: clicking the button times in quick succession.


Multiple-mouse systems








The three-button scrollmouse has become the most often available design. As of 2007 (& roughly since the late 1990s), users most often employ the second button to invoke a contextual menu in the computer's program user interface, which contains options specifically tailored to the interface element over which the mouse cursor currently sits. By default, the primary mouse button sits located on the lefthand side of the mouse, for the benefit of right-handed users; left-handed users can usually reverse this configuration by program.

Mouse buttons are microswitches which can be pressed to select or interact with an element of a graphical user interface, producing a one-of-a-kind clicking sound.