Comments on: Of Mice and Men – Mice and RSI

By: Hessiess

Hessiess — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:26:11 +0000

Personally the best way that I have found to avoid RSI related to mouse usage is to simply not use one at all, and do absolutely everything with the keyboard. This involves using tools such as Tiling window managers, a number of Xterms, Vim, Vimperator, markup languages such as LaTeX and HTML and a decent Linux distro, as they are massively more customisable.

For the times when the mouse is absolutely necessary(i.e. image editing), its hard to beat a graphics tablet.

By: alanf

alanf — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:03:45 +0000

The Nib software by Designer Appliances Inc. is a good choice for reducing mouse clicking use. See my blog post on reducing mouse use. In it I describe another free tool. called 'point 'n click by Polital' which is free. I used to use Nib software a long time ago when it was free and called 'mousetool'. It is a very useful piece of software, but since it's now no longer free the Point 'n Click software is the cheaper option.

By: LChristianson

LChristianson — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:56:31 +0000

For reducing clicking, try the Nib software offered at http://www.aerobicmouse.com
I haven’t purchased it yet, I’m only in the 2nd day of my 30-day free trial, but I have already come to appreciate this handy tool. The software virtually eliminates the need to click/double-click. It includes a counter that records how many clicks the software has kept you from making. I have been using this tool for 1 working day and my current ratio is 3289 Nib clicks to my 377 clicks. That figures out to about 90% fewer clicks on my part! You might want to check this out! I am still trying to decide whether I want to invest in a Foot Mouse, or just try this software for a week and see if my RSI symptoms lessen. I will update this post next week.

By: DThorpe

DThorpe — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:32:18 +0000

You don’t need two mice plugged in – wireless versions are cheaper than ever – I’ve just realised the small one I got for my laptop works on my desktop, so I can swap hands at will.

By: alanf

alanf — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:08:13 +0000

The contour roller mouse has between 5 and 7 programmable buttons to choose from (depending on model bought) The clicking can be done by clicking the roller too. I found that controlling the roller position with the right hand, whilst using a combination of three fingers to click one button with the left hand (the buttons are fairly big) to be the best option for me. Unfortunately this excellent device arrived on the market too late to truly make a difference to my injury, although it certainly extended my time at work by a year or two.

By: ruthariel

ruthariel — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:58:20 +0000

I agree that the foot mouse isn’t a great solution for moving the cursor; however, the foot pedal relieves me of a lot of the wear and tear of clicking and scrolling. The Footime mouse/pedal has both the mouse and a pedal with 5 buttons that can be used for up to 10 functions. It’s a little too complicated, but I do like using the 3 or 4 main functions that are available in all applications. Clicking is the most stressful movement for me, even worse than typing, so I love using the foot pedal to click.

How is clicking when you use the Contour Roller Mouse? Are you tapping a touchpad?

By: alanf

alanf — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:35:35 +0000

I agree with you re shortcuts. I'll be addressing this topic in future posts. Keyboard shortcuts are great, and really need to be learned by everyone. One downside of course is that they enable you to be more productive, which can of course result in you guessed it - more work! Having originally injured my hands on a keyboard I have to say that mice are not the sole culprit in causing RSI injuries. The act of continually tensioning/stressing the forearm, wrist, hand tendons and muscles coupled with the microscopic movements of typing and clicking seem to be the cause of many RSI problems. I also have found that continual use of many keyboard shortcuts in certain applications like spreadsheets can become equally repetitive in nature e.g. continual CTRL-C, CTRL-V usage. So while keyboard solutions should be learned by users, they can't be solely relied upon for answers. Web browsing using Firefox is a very good example of what can be done with keyboard shortcuts

By: woodcrafts

woodcrafts — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:12:16 +0000

One aspect of computer useage is that there are many ways of achiveving the same result. Most of the mouse functions can be done by keyboard shortcuts but very few people are aware of them. The original concept was to use the mouse for operations that needed to move quickly around the desktop, e.g. CAD, DTP, but functions such as word processing, spreadsheets should be achieved purely by keyboard functions. I suspect a lot of RSI is exacerbated by continual movement from keyboard to mouse and back again. How often have you seen someone completing an online form, use the mouse to move between fields, when the ‘Tab’ key will do exactly the same.
This problem is due to ignorance of the extended keyboard functions, both on the part of users and trainers, and laziness of users to actually learn more functions. And these functions aren’t hidden. Look at any menu and you will usually see the keyboard functions to the right of the menu option. The commonest ones must be Ctrl/C for Copy, Ctrl/V for Paste, Ctrl/X for Cut, Ctrl/O for Open, Ctrl/P to Print. Get to know these and you will be much faster and save injury.
Unfortunately some new software authors don’t conform to the original Windows standards, (Microsoft included) and these options have been forgotten but I contact those companiies to remind them of the problems their ‘abbreviated’ software is causing.
Hope that is of interest to you.

By: alanf

alanf — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:23:47 +0000

I have not seen the footime controller before, although I did at one stage try to use a No-Hands Mouse (www.footmouse.com). I found it very hard to get used to, and it certainly did not give me personally the control of a regular mouse that I needed. It also led to my ankle hurting for a while, which wasn’t the desired outcome either. This is the whole difficulty with alternative input devices, very few give the exact control that a regular mouse does. I am in no way sponsored by Contour Design, but the Contour Roller Mouse is the closest I’ve come to finding a viable control alternative to a regular mouse, with minimal (re) learning curve.

Alas, my injury pre-dated it’s invention by several years otherwise it may have helped me more.

By: ruthariel

ruthariel — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:25:51 +0000

Great suggestions. I like the idea of having two mice plugged in and ready to go. By the way, I also use a foot pedal and foot mouse (Footime by Bili). The foot mouse is difficult to use, so often I get the cursor into the general area where I want to click and finish positioning it with the regular mouse. Also, using your feet causes strain on the neck (I have a neck injury), so I limit my use of this setup. Normally, I just use a regular mouse to position the cursor and the foot pedal to do the clicking and scrolling.