I'm curious. The focus here seems to be on whether or not to use alternate-click, with the primary concern being that it is not necessarily discoverable. What about other contextual command area approaches? There's the idea of "smart tags" where you show an affordance when an object is selected that invites people to click it and reveal contextual commands. There's the idea of local contextual commands that automatically reveal when a thing is selected somewhere near/around the thing, and there's the idea of a reserved space in the interface for contextual commands to appear. Double-click to reveal. Press and hold to reveal. There are maybe other ideas, too, no?
Are people thinking about these as alternatives to the alternate-click? What was the thinking behind the single-button mouse? Why do Mac's now support alt-clicking? Is it the best thing or is it just something that has become commonplace? Was it a technological limitation that made us sort of default to alt-click for these purposes? Isn't the real question not so much whether or not you should support alternate-clicking but rather what is the best way for my solution and audience to access contextual commands (assuming you need them)? --Ambrose ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
