No Mouse Wheel? Use A Virtual Scroll Ring

By Roland Piquepaille

It's easy to scroll up and down a large document if you have a mouse with a wheel. But many laptop users, tablet PC owners and people with touchscreens are out of luck. In this article, Technology Research News tells us that this era is over. Computer scientists at Brown University have developed a software simulation of the mouse wheel. A transparent ring appears on your screen. Touch it, move your finger clockwise, and the text will move down. And of course, counterclockwise motion scrolls up. According to their study, users actually preferred this virtual scroll ring to a mouse wheel, because it's faster and the scrolling continuous. This method can be implemented in any software as of today, so keep an eye around. Read more...

Although scrolling through documents is extremely common, the most widespread technique for scrolling has a serious drawback: it takes your attention away from the document you are working on, interrupting your work.

Using the mouse wheel to scroll eliminates that drawback, but doesn't work well for situations that involve large touchscreens or tablet PCs.

What to do for these users?

The Brown researchers have designed a software simulation of the physical scroll ring that works like the mouse wheel but does not require the hardware.

The virtual scroll ring maps circular finger, stylus, or mouse motion into vertical scrolling. Clockwise motion moves the scroll bar down and counterclockwise motion moves it up. Bigger circles and faster motion increase scrolling speed.

Here is the Virtual Scroll Ring in action, with a screenshot of the setup used in the study. The subjects' task was to scroll the target line so it lies within the marked frame. (Credit: Brown University).

I can hear you telling me, "This has been done before." True, but there is a twist here.

Previous Interface techniques have allowed users to rotate objects with circular motion but these are based on the angle of the pointer relative to the center of the circle, which requires a fixed point on the screen. The virtual scrolling is based on distance traveled around the circle, meaning the circle can drift around the screen. This allows the user to keep visual attention on the document.

A question remains: will this method be used?

The software is well-suited for pen-based computers and interactive displays, which have limited screen and peripherals space, and which people are likely to use increasingly over the coming decade, according to the researchers. [And] the technique can be implemented in any software now, according to the researchers.

This research has been presented at the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2004), which was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on October 24