18-Button OpenOfficeMouse

This is very unique feature that had been implemented in computer mouse. 18-Button in a mouse. WarMouse announced the release of the OOMouse at Orvieto, Italy, November 6, 2009, the first multi-button application mouse designed for a wide variety of software applications, including Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice.org. With a revolutionary and patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, the OOMouse is intended to provide a faster and more efficient user interface for most complex software applications than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit.

The OpenOfficeMouse was designed with the goal of being the best and most useful mouse the digital world has seen to date. Initially inspired by the keyboards on the Treo smartphones, it was designed by a game designer who was annoyed with the paltry number of buttons available on high-end gaming mice. Because gaming mice have historically been designed primarily for FPS games, not MMO and RTS games, they do not possess sufficient buttons for the dozens of commands, actions and spells that are required in games that make heavy use of icon bars and pull-down menus. After discovering that the available World of Warcraft mice were nothing more than regular two-button mice decorated with orcs, dwarves, and Night elves, the idea of the OOMouse was born. After much experimentation, it was determined that 16 buttons divided into two 8-button halves were the maximum number of buttons that could be efficiently used by feel alone. In the process of design and development, it quickly became apparent that many non-gaming applications would also benefit from having dozens of commands accessible directly from the mouse, especially applications with nested pull-down menus and hotkey combinations. OpenOffice.org was selected as the ideal application suite around which to design this application mouse because the usage tracking feature of OpenOffice.org 3.1 permitted the assignment of application commands to mouse buttons based on the data gathered from more than 600 million actual mouse and keystroke commands enacted by users.
Over on the free-software side of the world, things are a little different. If the phrase “design by committee” ever sent an icy pang of fear into your heart, then look away now. The Open Office organization, behind the splendid free MS Word alternative of the same name, have come up with a mouse with not one button, but 18, all of which can be double clicked, if you can actually contort your fingers to reach them.
And of course, all these buttons can be configured, tweaked and customized as you’d expect from an open-source design. Here, in it’s confusing glory, is the (not even full) run down:
18 programmable mouse buttons with double-click functionality
Three different button modes: Key, Keypress, and Macro
Analog Xbox 360-style joystick with optional 4, 8, and 16-key command modes
Clickable scroll wheel
512k of flash memory
63 on-mouse application profiles with hardware, software, and autoswitching capability
1024-character macro support.
Open source support software for creating, managing, and customizing application profiles
Import and export of custom profiles in XML format
Optional audio notification of profile switching with customizable wave files
PDF export of profile button assignments
Adjustable resolution from 400 to 1,600 CPI
20 default profiles for popular games and applications, including OpenOffice.org
3.1, Adobe Photoshop, the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, World of Warcraft, and the Call of Duty series.
One of those stands out: “PDF export of profile button assignments”. A mouse so complicated that you need a cheat-sheet to use it. What’s more, it is butt-ugly. looking like somebody cut holes in a generic dime-store mouse and inserted the plastic leftovers of pill-bottle lids.
The saving feature, if indeed this thing can be saved, is the analog control stick, very similar to the Nintendo 64 controller’s mushroom stick. Unlike the nodule on the mighty mouse or the tipping, clicking scroll wheels of any other mouse, the stick is on the side, under your thumb. This strikes us a dead handy.
The pictures you see are either mockups or prototypes, and the actual mouse should be available in February for $75. It’ll work with Windows, OS X and of course, Linux.