Mouse Gestures using StrokeIt to initiate commands using the mouse alone
September 2, 2009 in United states by billbanking
The “Festival of Thought” conference in DIT Kevin street this year (thanks to the great work of Ted, Jim, and Tomás) saw many different presentations from assistive technologies, to exploring the brain’s neuroelectrical mystery, to teddy bears in space! I myself wanted to share some of the simple desktop applications I use to make life a little easier for me – to speed up the operations I commonly use.
For one I demonstrated “StrokeIt!”, an open source application that converts symbols drawn by the mouse into whatever commands you want such as running a program/web browser, sending keystrokes to a program, or other utilities like having a particular window “always on top” so nothing blocks it.
Instead of boring you with textual-detail I put together a small video and just uploaded it tonight, demonstrating all the major things you can do with it – or at least that I have used with it. Its 24minutes long and is in no way a polished demonstration :0).
In Summary the software can:
Interpret predefined symbols you draw on the screen such as the letter “S”, and run a set of predetermined commands that you have previously specified, such as to open the “save as” dialog in a particular application or open up a program. You can:
1) Run a program (MS Word, Adobe reader, Open Office….)
2) Send keystrokes to a particular application or even to the desktop (e.g. I set up the pressing of the button as holding down right_click on the mouse, followed by left_click. This saves time in traveling back to the keyboard and increases working speed.
3) Open your web browser
4) Draw symbols big or small such as a large R or a small R on the screen to give the same outcome. This has applications perhaps for assistive technologies whereby the user is not restricted to make a rigid symbol and allows a degree of freedom or error. However, this at the minute is only from my own experience and not as any product of research.
4) Send Hotkeys to an application (same as 2 above really)
5) Far more than I have explored… it claims to have the ability to act as command for all applications since I suppose full scripts could be used in the SendKeystrokes aspect of the application.
If you would like to know more let me know. The video should tell most of the story, but let me know eitherway. Thanks for reading…
Chris
