Mousepad

A mousepad (US) or mouse mat (UK) is a surface for placing and moving a computer mouse. A mousepad enhances the usability of the mouse compared to using a mouse directly on a table by providing a surface to allow it to measure movement accurately and without jitter. Some mousepads increase ergonomics by providing a padded wrist rest.

History

During a 1968 presentation by Douglas Engelbart marking the public debut of a mouse, Engelbart used a control console designed by Jack Kelley of Herman Miller that included a keyboard and an inset portion used as a support area for the mouse. According to Kelley and also stated by Alex Pang, Kelley designed the first mousepad a year later, in 1969.

Details of a mousepad designed by Armando M. Fernandez were published in the Xerox Disclosure Journal in 1979 with the description:

To assist the operation of a cathode ray tube pointer 10 wherein a metal ball is rolled on a hard surface, the disclosed pad may be utilized. A resilient, rubber-like material 12 is bonded or otherwise attached to a hard base material 14 which keeps the rubber-like material flat. The base has four rubber-like pads 16 on the opposite side from the resilient material to refrain the pad from sliding on the surface of a table, for instance.

Xfce

Xfce (pronounced as four individual letters) is a free and open-source desktop environment for Unix and Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD.

Xfce aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use. Xfce embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of separately packaged parts that together provide the full functionality of the desktop environment, but can be selected in subsets to suit user needs and preference. Another priority of Xfce is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org.

Features

Like GNOME 2, Xfce is based on the GTK+ 2 toolkit. It uses the Xfwm window manager, described below. Its configuration is entirely mouse-driven, with the configuration files hidden from the casual user. Xfce does not feature any desktop animations, but Xfwm supports compositing.

History

Olivier Fourdan started the project in 1996, as a Linux version of CDE (Common Desktop Environment), initially a proprietary software and later released as free software. However, after a dozen years of development and several major versions, Xfce has diverged from CDE and stands on its own. The name "Xfce" originally stood for "XForms Common Environment", but since that time Xfce has been rewritten twice and no longer uses the XForms toolkit. The name survived, but it is no longer capitalized as "XFCE", but rather as "Xfce". The developers' current stance is that the initialism no longer stands for anything specific. It has been nicknamed "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", even in some of its man pages. Another possibility X Freakin' Cool Environment is suggested at Xfce Wiki. As a result, Xfce is currently an acronym that doesn't stand for anything.