mouse ether

(left) When trying to move the mouse pointer straight to a target on the other screen of a multimon setup the pointer gets warped, because (middle) the reason is that the system is oblivious of resolution differences and gaps. (right) Mouse ether eliminates warping, allowing users to acquire all targets on the direct path.

When acquiring a target located on a different screen, multi-monitor users face a challenge: differences in resolution and vertical and horizontal offsets between screens cause the mouse pointer to get warped, making the attempt to acquire the target difficult. Mouse ether eliminates warping effects by applying appropriate transformations to all mouse move events. In our user study, mouse ether improved participants’ performance on a target acquisition task across two screens running at different resolutions by up to 28%. 7 of the 8 participants also strongly preferred using mouse ether to the control.
 

To calibrate mouse ether, users need to perform only three drag interactions.

Another benefit of mouse ether: Without mouse ether, the mouse pointer can get blocked at screen borders on the way. Mouse ether avoids that by allowing the pointer to temporarily travel through off-screen space.