| Dear OS makers: Please make it easier to swap the mouse buttons and also flip the cursor at the same time. I say this because I use multiple computers and depending on when and where I am using them, sometimes want the mouse on the left. In addition to it "feeling wrong" to use a right handed cursor with my left hand (I swear it physically gives me cramps), having the cursor not match the buttons is super frustrating. Once I got used to the direction of the cursor indicating the button configuration, it comes pretty naturally to click appropriately, even on occasions where I am using the mouse with the 'wrong' hand (because I'm using the other hand to pet a cat or drink my coffee or something). On Windows 10/11, it's relatively easy to swap the buttons, but then I have to go into another, much more deeply buried menu (the old control panel that they seem to want to bury but can't get rid of because the Windows settings team is apparently too incompetent to put all the stuff you really need in the new configuration screens) to change the cursor to match. So then there's 5 seconds or so where the cursor doesn't match the button configuration during which my bones want to jump out of my wrist and then I need to go take a break. And for some reason, Windows 10 on my work computer seems to remember the button configuration but forget the cursor setting between reboots, so there's always a minute of confustion, there. Also, if you're going to write some program with a cursor, DON'T OVERRIDE THE OS CURSOR WITH SOME {RIGHT|LEFT}-HANDED THING! I'm looking at dumb Acrobat Reader. The arrow in that program always points to the left even if I've flipped things in Windows, and then I get all confused when I try to click on the menus as if the mouse is in its right-handed configuration when it actually isn't. I seem to recall some Linux distro that I used once upon a time getting this right, where there was an option to flip the cursor and the buttons at the same time. But I haven't seen that for a while. Relatedly, why can't I have multiple cursors? There have been times when it would have been convenient to have a mouse plugged in on the left and the right and just have them both show up on the screen (pointing to the right and left, respectively, of course, with button configuration to match) so I could easily switch to whichever was more convenient at the time. Or for when $handedness-handed coworker wants to drive (just use the cursor that you normally would!). Best I found was some AutoHotKey script that didn't do quite what I wanted. Why does the OS layer need to assume exactly one cursor? Dumb if you ask me. |