Jog dial
A jog dial is a control element on electronic devices in the form of a wheel that can be rotated with the finger and is used to ergonomically set a value or a position. Since the late 1990s, it has been widely used as a scroll wheel (mouse wheel) on computer mice , where it is used to control scrolling (scrolling) or the image scale (zooming) in graphical user interfaces (GUI) .
History and dissemination
As part of jog / shuttles , jog dials could be found on video recorders and laser disc players from various manufacturers as early as the 1980s .
An early computer mouse equipped with a scroll wheel was the EasyScroll Mouse, sold by Kye Systems under the Genius brand from 1995 . It contains a wheel to control vertical scrolling between the left and right mouse buttons. Shortly thereafter, other hardware manufacturers began to produce compatible mice, for example the IntelliMouse , which was sold by Microsoft from 1996 ; By the end of the 1990s, the scroll wheel had become established on PC mice. Occasionally, mice appeared on the market that were equipped with a second wheel for horizontal scrolling (around 2000) or instead of the scroll wheel had a scroll ball that was physically similar to a trackball and also allowed two-dimensional scrolling (in 2002).
Since a built-in touchpad is often used instead of a mouse in notebooks , a scroll wheel has also been built into some of these computers. However, modern touchpads can also be used for scrolling by moving your finger on the right or bottom edge or by swiping with two fingers, so that an additional scroll wheel is no longer necessary.
Since the early 2000s, jog dials have also been built into many portable devices such as PDAs , cell phones or MP3 players , where they are also mainly used for scrolling lists.
Structure and use
In contrast to potentiometer- based rotary knobs, such as common volume controls on radios , jog dials can be turned in both directions without a stop; the set value is not determined by the absolute position of the wheel, but can be changed relatively by rotating movements. This means that large or variable value ranges can be covered. The component used for this is an incremental encoder (rotary pulse encoder ), which is also used for measurements on machine tools, among other things.
The shuttle dial is a similar control element , but the position of the wheel determines the speed at which the value is automatically increased or decreased.
Jog dials are often provided with a grid so that the individual change steps can be felt while turning.
There are generally two options for installing a jog dial:
- The wheel is mounted in such a way that it can be operated from the front. The axis of rotation is perpendicular to the surface of the device. Jog dials of this type can be found, for example, on many video recorders or on iPods of the first generation (2001) and allow the user to turn the wheel for any length of time without removing the finger.
- The actuation takes place tangentially, i.e. over the circumference of the wheel, often only a small area of it. The axis of rotation is parallel to the surface of the device, in most cases within the device. This means that less space is required on the device surface, but the user can only turn the wheel a short distance without having to put his finger down. This construction is used for scroll wheels in computer mice and PDAs.
Mouse wheels in various computer systems
Mice with scroll wheels were initially intended for PCs and were supported under Microsoft Windows .
In contrast, mice possess of Unix - Workstations traditionally three right mouse buttons and scroll wheel, no; To this day, for example, Sun workstations are delivered with mice without wheels. The scroll wheel has also found its way into the Unix world via Unix operating systems (especially Linux ) running on PC hardware and can be used for scrolling under Unix GUIs such as Gnome or KDE . The function of the middle mouse button, which was traditionally necessary on Unix-like systems, is more or less guaranteed by the push-button scroll wheel that is common today.
Although Apple had received a patent for a wheel in a mouse years before the IntelliMouse, Macintosh users had to do without a mouse wheel for a long time. Apple has only been offering the Mighty Mouse, a mouse with a scroll ball, since August 2005.
Support in graphical user interfaces
Which action the turning of a mouse wheel actually triggers is determined by the application program or the underlying operating system or GUI toolkit . In addition to scrolling a certain number of lines, it is also common to adjust graphically simulated slide controls or numeric input fields. It is also often used for zooming.
Since several windows and widgets that can be controlled by the scroll wheel can be visible on the screen at the same time, the triggered action is also determined by the position of the mouse pointer and the cursor and by which window is active .
In many cases, the effect can be changed by pressing modification buttons , for example in the web browsers Opera , Google Chrome , Firefox or Internet Explorer, the zoom level can be changed with the scroll wheel while holding the control button .
receipt
- ^ Meet The Inventor of the Mouse Wheel. Retrieved June 8, 2015 .