Preliminary Note: this brainstorm idea is complimentary to another: "idea #7359: applet that visually shows keyboard shortcuts used (useful in screencasts)":
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7359/
So if you vote for this idea, consider voting for the other one also!
I would like a Gnome applet that allows me to see visually whenever mouse buttons are pressed. For instance, a left-click could produce a semi-transparent, slowly-fading red "aura" around the mouse, which is known to represent a left-click. And a right-click could produce a blue aura. And a middle-click could produce a green aura. And rolling the mousewheel down could make a purple streaking arrow moving down, and rolling the mouse wheel up could produce an orange streaking arrow upwards. (In a preference menu, other colours could be selected instead).
This would be an indispensable teaching aid (say, in a Screencast, or when a teacher is teaching a classroom full of kids how to use Gnome, showing the Gnome Desktop on a data video projector).
Most of us use the mouse (plus additional keystrokes sometimes, like adding "Shift" to a click) instantly and automatically. Most of us would not pause to think that perhaps the people we are explaining things to might not know that way of using the mouse (+ optionally keyboard) yet. When we "bust a move" with more advanced mouse usage, without our audience/student knowing the trick we pulled, it can disorient and confuse them ("what the hell did he just do?"). And many of our audience and students have egos too large to pause us for clarification, thereby admitting they don't know that shortcut, thereby exposing themselves as being ignorant of something that is obvious to us.
So there's a lot of human nature and sociology wrapped up in this idea: this applet eases the sociological divide between the uber-linux-geeks who know all the mouse shortcuts, and those who are still learning, but aren't quite ready to openly admit it. Just think of all the hoardes of computer novices out there who would love to know about these shortcuts, and can only learn about them one at time over the years through slow, painful osmosis from their more-skilled peers. Especially think of all the newcomers to Linux (or Ubuntu) who are hungry for such new skills, and could learn much faster if a tool like this existed. There are tons of users (ie. almost all Baby Boomers I know personally, no offence to them) who don't even know what right-clicking is useful for, nor that it is even *possible* to middle-click the mouse by pressing the mousewheel down carefully, and not rotating it. Don't laugh, it's all too common.
For example, if the Teacher uses Shift-click, the kids may not know which mouse + shortcut key sequence the teacher used (unless the teacher states verbally "and now I'll just press Shift-click to resize this object, maintaining its aspect ratio"). Thanks to the hypothetical implementation of brainstorm idea #7359
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7359/), the word "Shift" could appear on the Gnome panel in bold, white text with a vivid red background, then slowly fade away after a few seconds, plus a red aura appears around the mouse pointer, also slowly fading away.
In this way, students can see each shortcut the teacher knows and uses (but doesn't bother to slow down and explain, which is usually the case).
This feature would also be really useful for anyone who is making video documentation about how to use the Gnome desktop (like is seen at Ubuntu ScreenCasts:
http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/). Any fancy mouse usage would be self-evident. The screencast could also be smaller in size because the speaker doesn't have to waste time explaining the mouse usage verbally. In fact, just by watching the mouse move around, and seeing the shortcuts used, that could be documentation enough, without even hearing the voice of the person giving the demonstration.
This is especially useful when your native language is NOT English, thereby making all screencasts far more self-explanatory to those who cannot speak English.
Just think of all these other really useful mouse + keyboard shortcuts that would ideally appear in the same way, and how super useful it would be to the novice user if they could learn these:
- Ctrl + Click (To make a copy of a file as you drag its copy to some new place)
- Alt + Click (to move a window by grabbing it in the center, not by the titlebar, which is indispensable when the titlebar goes off the top of the screen, which sometimes happens on a small display)
- Right click (to show context menus)
- Middle Click (say, when opening new tabs in Firefox)
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