Hacker News Reader

Comment by crocowhile | Hacker News Reader

I remember when the multi-touch first came out and everybody was excited. Few years and thousands of iphones have passed and the only "revolutionary" thing we can do with it is still zoom-in and zoom-out pinching pictures.

I am quite amazed by the resistance people have when thinking about HDI: take the multitouch pad on the new mac, for instance. I love it, but why there isn't even a way to do something like middle mouse button?

View on HN

The problem is that a real large multi-touch device is not yet on the market (the Surface doesn't count due to the pricing). The iPhone may be multitouch, but being able to fit more than two fingers onto the screen and still be able to see anything is a challenge.

middle mouse button isn't relevant in the context of a trackpad imho. I also don't see the need for it (except closing FF tabs).

It's not just for browsing (FF let you close tabs and open new ones too when you middle click on a link). For instance it is instrumental if you want unix-like copy and paste, to which I am addicted by now.

Don't you just have your other hand on the keyboard all the time anyway? Set FF to open everything in tabs, so that's solved, and then use cmd+: w to close windows, q to quit, c to copy, v to paste, etc etc... they're all right there under your non-trackpad fingers.

I didn't even use middle-click back before wheel mice (when they literally had 3 buttons).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com