Bubble Cursor Bookmarklet | Hacker News Reader

Bubble Cursor Bookmarklet

stuartk.co.uk

36 pointschrislloyd17 comments

“Cool” but the fact there are no dead zones, and lots of spots where a pixel or two nudge (easy to do by accident) means you’re clicking a different link than the one you were about to a pixel ago, give me great pause. (And of course this would be more “useful” as an extension or userscript than bookmarklet; clicking a bookmarklet to lazy-click links is a weak value proposition, naturally.)

That's the massive downside to every implementation of bubble cursors / something similar I've yet seen. I'll label them "naive" implementations, because they're so mindlessly implemented: it selects the nearest clickable item, with no respect for any relation to movement or chaotic spots where you can select different things with single pixel movements.

Though I do see that this could be useful once they're more polished. I just don't get why everyone's drinking the same implementation kool-aid, rather than seeking to improve on it.

Hi, I just put this together quickly to see what it feels like when used on a web page rather than an artificial environment, it wasn't intended as a fully featured interaction method.

In fact even while playing around with it myself I found it frustrating that I couldn't click anywhere without following a link, and you're right that the implementation is very naive. This was just a bit of fun which I wanted to put out there. Hopefully that explains why it isn't perfect :)

Wasn't a rant against your implementation, just that every one I've seen is a mirror image of the others, with only one variable: whether your pointer determines an edge of the circle - thereby making it harder to determine where it'll jump to - or it determines the center of the circle - making it harder to aim. There's gotta be a better way, because the concept is excellent.

Hi, as I said to Groxx, this was just a quick hack, hopefully nothing to take too seriously.

There are definitely improvements that could be made, for example looking at the direction of travel, and if someone wants to try implementing them I would love to see it! (And yep, for full time use another method of getting it on to the page would be far superior. I felt like a bookmarklet was the most frictionless way to try it out personally, and to get others to give it a go as well)

Thanks for the feedback!

What if the color of the selection box around the link changed according to how fast your mouse was moving and how far it would have to move before a different link was selected?

Cool. Unfortunately I can't use it because I have this nervous tic where I click all over the page randomly.

Same. I have the problem of highlighting text constantly. It drives everyone I know crazy.

A bit odd that it doesn't even work on their page: http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/9783/oddity.jpg

Hi, I'm the author. I haven't seen that behaviour before. Would you mind telling me which browser/OS you're using?

Happens reliably for me, with other odd behaviors on other sites (not all). Safari 5.0.2 on an up-to-date OSX 10.6. I could record a screencast, if you'd like, though I'll try cleaning things up first. An extension / the fact that I haven't shut down Safari in 4 days could be messing something up.

are you sure? press 'B' to see the bubble, otherwise it just highlights the links.

Did you check the screenshot? The grey circle is the cursor, and the blue-highlighted link is what it thinks is closest. All three of those underlined phrases are links, but it gets it massively wrong when it's near the mid-left of the three.

Sorry, I missed it in a rush earlier. But the cursor is accurate for me.

What does this help with?

It is a bit non-obvious. Check out the demo linked, and turn on timing mode. Now try to click the blue circle (it moves after each click) as fast as possible. Turn on and off the bubble cursor mode and see if your time changes.

TL;DR: It allows you to be less accurate with the mouse because the nearest target is auto-highlighted.

I could see it being useful for someone that has a hard time controlling the mouse accurately, either from some kind of physical limitation or inexperience.

Also: http://uiobservatory.com/2010/the-bubble-cursor-in-action/

Cool. I've assumed touchscreen UIs used something like this, within certain tolerance limits, to make it easier to click small targets.

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