Suggestion: Enable mouse gestures by default

[chris at deadhand.com]

Am Donnerstag 08 November 2007 schrieb Yuriy Kozlov:

> I think it needs to be easier to find where to enable mouse gestures.
> I look for it in the mouse settings, but turns out the gesture
> settings are hidden under accessibility.  This is a general issue with
> the accessibility settings section on every OS.  I think the solution
> would be to put these types of things in BOTH places.  Or is that
> taboo?
>
> ~ Yuriy

Yes, I agree that the KHotkeys / mouse gesture configuration should be put in 
System Settings -> Keyboard and Mouse. That way there might be a *chance* 
that a user looking for mouse gestures might find it - nobody would expect it 
under accessibility.

> I don't think enabling mouse gestures by default is such a great idea.
>  Except maybe if it was done how opera does it, where it asks you
> whether you want them the first time you perform one.
>

Still I'm pretty fond of the idea to have mouse gestures by default because 
it's a concept that works so well after beeing introduced to it. 
No user unaware of mouse gestures would look for them because they just don't 
know what they are or how they can improve their workflow (and that, they 
would, I'm sure). Opera did a good job on this. It had some neat 
documentation for some time and on start brought up information pages about 
it's special features (mosue gestures among others) in earlier versions. 
Kubuntu wouldn't have to go as far and present a page with information about 
gestures, kio slaves and so on on every boot, but it could be put in the 
documentation.

That said I have to admit that an informational message the first time a mouse 
gesture is executed (and before it's action is actually performed) is 
necessary. As has been mentioned Opera does it rather elegently - see 
[1]. If we could provide something along those lines, with a link to 
the documentation as well as the configuration place there should be no 
problem with enabling mouse gestures.

Only problem is that somebody with the skills to implement something like this 
into KHotkeys needs to believe in this as well as the Kubuntu main 
developers. Unfortunately I pretty much lack those skills and just hoped to 
move something with my suggestion and configuration template.

Chris

[1] http://www.deadhand.com/misc/opera_gestures.png