Build a better trackpad

[ewx]

I don't have even the faintest idea if this is possible, but: what trackpads really need is the ability to tell what finger you're using. Index finger should mean left click and middle finger right click. (And the other way round for left-handers, but of course so are the buttons.)

Comments

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, such things were a staple RISC OS April fool.

The obvious ways would be to use either fingerprint recognition (problematic for many reasons) or, more plausibly, have the user wear a couple of small accelerometers. An added bonus of the latter is that you can easily change your setup by moving accelerometers from one finger-tip to another rather than having to reconfigure software.

[gerald_duck]

Now that you mention it… agreed.

If that's too difficult, perhaps a multi-touch trackpad (which many laptops now have, even if not much uses them yet) could be configured to notice if you slide three fingers around on the pad and then click with one of them? As a bonus, stroking the trackpad with the middle of the three fingers could emulate the wheel, too.

[imc.livejournal.com]

I'd settle for the ability to tell when I'm clicking, full stop…

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'd settle for the ability to tell when I'm not clicking.

[imc.livejournal.com]

That's what I was getting at, really.

Hate the things. On my laptop there is both a nipple and a pad. The pad is permanently turned off.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

On my MacBook I have a slight habit of having some of my left hand touching the pad at the same time as trying to do something with my right hand, and getting two-finger functions instead of one.

On my Thinkpad I have the pad turned off and use the nipple, yes. (Also that ran MacOS Tiger for a while).

[simont]

On occasions, when extremely sleepy, I have been known to press the left button on my trackball with my right-button finger and be confused when it didn't seem to treat it as a right button click.

[nevboo.livejournal.com]

Didn't the one Apple bought and then discontinued do that? I can't remember its name right now only that it is damn expensive to get now. Perhaps it just recognised gestures.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

RFID finger implants?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about comparing pressure or size of contact patches - the relevant fingers on me are different lengths so perhaps that would lead to some consistent, in-principle detectable, difference. It'd have to be pretty reliable, I stopped using Apple's Mighty Mouse because it couldn't distinguish left and right clicks, which is fantastically annoying.

[mdw [distorted.org.uk] (from livejournal.com)]

An ancient laptop I had did what I think is the most sensible approximation I've seen to this so far.

If you tap with one finger, it decides that it was a button-1 click. If you tap with two fingers, that's a button-2 click. If you tap with three fingers, it's a button-3 click. If you tap (with any number of fingers) and quickly start moving your finger on the touchpad (with just one finger), then it decides that you're dragging, with whichever mouse button you selected with the initial tap.

The only thing you couldn't do with this laptop was chording. Which annoyed users of wily and not many others.

I've no idea why this (otherwise distressingly standard) laptop had such a sensibly configured touchpad, or why other laptops in the intervening decade haven't adopted this feature. Oh, well.