Re: [g-a-devel]Clarification needed on Mouse Interaction guidelines.

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Padraig O'Briain wrote:
> 
> ------------- Begin Included Message -------------
> Hi Narayana,
> 
> Perhaps Calum can clarified this but I would expect that any operation which can
> be done by button 2 or button 3 should also be capable of being done using the
> keyboard; for exampel Shift+F10 should popup the context menu.

Yes, that's one example.  

The reason for the guideline is that some users relying on assistive
technologies may only be able to use one mouse button easily, or may
have an input device that only provides or emulates one mouse button.

Therefore, you have to assume that any operation that uses button 2 or
button 3 might just be completely unavailable to those users. So it has
to be additionally provided in some other way that is accessible from
the keyboard, and/or button 1.  For example, Cut, Copy and Paste often
appear on popup menus, but they also appear on the application's Edit
menu (accessible with button 1), and they also have access keys and
keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V).

In the particular case of popup menus, they should never contain any
functions that aren't also available via the main menu bar or some other
more obvious means anyway.  Partly for accessibility reasons, but also
because many users still don't even know popup menus exist, so they're
very much an 'expert' feature.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems