Uncreative Labs

Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 14 Location: Clearfield, UT

HY guys

I have a question here about 2 button mice... Last night while I was soaking in the tub, LOL it occurred to me that there seems to have always been 2 button mice on PC's, even before windows! What exactly was that right button used for in the old days.... I know that some programs in win 3.1 where right click aware such as ms office, ECCO PRO, etc ( though windows itself wasn't until win 95 ). Was there some dos based programs that used it or was the right button like a assignable hot key of sorts?

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

well one is gaming, lets take the game doom for example, left button fires , the right opens doors and switches. another is stuff were the left button is use for selecting, and right is used for increasing/decreasing values. how far back we going? to the days of the 8-bit expantion card made by microsoft?

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 11:29 am

Actually, most PC mouses started out with 3 buttons. The middle and right buttons didn't take off right away, and the middle button was eliminated. I can't think of any DOS programs that used the middle button, and the ones that used the right button usually were attempting to emulate Windows.

Windows 95 had the selling point that now the right mouse button actually does something.

Why two buttons? I don't know. There have been usability comparison studies done between Apple's one-button mouse and the PC-compatible two-button mouse. For context menus and various other selections, the two button mouse is superior to the one button mouse. Three buttons would probably make the mouse too complicated for most usage, so that's probably why there's only two.

You can get mouses with as many as 5 buttons on them... they're for games.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

logitec mice were 3 button. possibly the bundled applications supported the middle button.

some earl;y mice has a 2-3 switch underneath.
I read that Logitec used Microsoft's PUBLISHED
specs and requirements for Mice,. seems Microsoft did not follow it's published specs. and logitec mice required their own driver.
later, I think, Logitec mice worled with native microsoft drivers.
" ancient lore"

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 2:34 pm

NC used right button and with logitech it was possible to asign middle button as double click (which I still do I use simple ones but the scroll wheel is also a button
and I asign it as double click which I find handy)

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 22 Location: near myself

I suppose pc mouse was born with three buttons for one of this reasons:
-2 and 3 button were used by early cad programs
-pc mouse was ispired by workstations of the era (like Sun and Xerox) that used three button mouse