Dave's personal ergonomic analysis
I like to sit back in my Morris chair and view the 25" widescreen monitor set at 1920 x 1080 pixels, from a comfortable distance. I have been using scroll wheel wireless mice for what seems like decades now and I use the chair's wide level arm as the mousing surface. I use point & click or the scroll wheel about equally, depending on the format of the site page I am viewing; scroll wheel is favoured for long lists and discussion groups like Vacuumland and Washerland or eBay and my Subaru Forums. It's just easier to get to where I wanna go quickly.
(I have always tailored my mouse properties for speed and screen travel with the slightest of wrist movement. Most people say my mouse is too fast but one 1.5" swipe of my mouse moves from extreme left to extreme right. I have become very accurate with my settings and use these tight tolerances when editing at the pixel level in Picture & Graphic tasks - ie: cropping photos and working with the scanner and merge software.)
Anyway, the highlight feature interferes with my customary efficiency on the Forum. Here's why is doesn't work for me:
Jams may not be the right word; here's what happens.
Say I start with my mouse pointer on the Index page 8 subject thread lines down...the wheel will scroll down through the list but on the up scroll stops where I began and will scroll no further up.
To do so I have to move the cursor to the top and start over.
Sometimes there are so many new posts (more on Washerland than Vacuumland admittedly) that to scan through them I use the jump-one-page feature of the right side scrollbar.
Again, the highlight feature and aforementioned 'jam' requires more potentially carpal tunnel fingering clicks to scan the full range of threads at a glance.
As for the skipping of threads this happens when the cursor lands between thread highlights. Scrolling with the wheel either moves to the next thread as it should, or skips over it and it skips unpredictably - sometimes skipping two adjacent threads. Makes the smooth screen scroll jerky.
The bright highlight colours flashing on and off is almost epileptic in its distraction on this big screen.
I find I have to pay too much attention to how and where I am mousing causing my relaxed position in the chair to shift, inducing undesirable stress.
I like to feel I am in control of my mouse and its functions. The highlight takes that feeling of control away like the mouse is deciding for me where it will land and what it will do when it damn well pleases.
I prefer to click on the red thread number rather than have the entire line become the link.
The highlight feature works better in the Husbands site because the font is smaller and the highlight lines are thinner, more closely matching the indentations of the average mousewheel. Also the highlight colour chosen is gray, not an intense rainbow shade flashing on and off.
While my main mainframe is an AMD dinosaur running XP III running Firefox and the mouse is a 1999 Logitech cordless wheelmouse with a Ball sensor - yes Really! - (for scrolling and navigation with my finger or thumb when standing or moving away from the chair - don't ask - less twitchy than a laser sensor) my MacBook 17" Pro with the Magic Mouse in Firefox or Safari (either OS10 or in WinXP via VMware) evidences the same erratic behaviors with the new highlights. Another favorite laptop travel mouse is the Kensington Slimblade with the tiny trackball on top.
As much as I applaud and encourage progress this feature does not work for me and I have turned it off for now. Thank you for the option and please provide the same in Vacuumland should this feature be introduced there.
Hope you're smiling, Robert.
And while I'm at it, the SHAG button on the Vacuumland site is too close to and centered over the thread line when I use my Ipod Touch with my small but pudgy fingers - I keep resetting everything to Not Read. Argh.
Dave
