Thanks, Todd and Mike, for the responses. Mike, yes, the question was specific to right-click (and apparently there are a lot of opinions just about that), but I was thinking that maybe it's a case of going to the doctor and saying your ear is hurting but his professional diagnosis suggests the root problem is something else and recommends treating that. IOW, I don't think we should limit ourselves to directly answering questions if zooming out and coming at it from a different angle might offer a better solution. You may be right; it may warrant a separate thread, though.
Todd, thanks for the specifics. That's what I was hoping to do--stimulate discussion/thought around potential alternatives. Double-click--yeah, that's really stretching, but it's one of those things where you kind of think people will figure it out and once they do, is it any worse/better than right-clicking. I kind of think that press and hold is about as arbitrary as alt-click, except that alt-click is now established. Just thinking/asking out loud if this is one of those cases where we've painted ourselves into a hole or if there is good reasoning/science behind it. Regarding Mac--I really, really like the mighty mouse--not having to specifically click a button but simply "leaning" to one side to trigger a click, and I like the multi-directional scroll ball. But I was surprised, having not used a Mac except very infrequently until this last year, that the alt-click is now fully supported by the mouse (even if more subtly) and that the touchpad has a (nice) specific gesture for it. I don't know when that was introduced, but my impression was that the Mac just had the single button and required the key sequence to trigger the alternate. So where I was going with that, albeit imprecisely, is wondering if this was simply caving to a convention that was popularized by the PC mouse (I presume!) or if they really found that this form of alt-clicking (i.e., pressing the "other" side of the mouse) was in fact something people want to do naturally to discover contextual commands. Maybe it doesn't matter, practically speaking, once something becomes so trained/ingrained, but I guess if anyone could change things for the better (assuming there are better alternatives) it'd be us, no? -a ________________________________________________________________ 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
