Ryan McDougall wrote:
Please don't default to single click. Microsoft tried that when they introduced their Active Desktop and failed horribly. Almost nobody used it. Perhaps this was due to since long learned habits, but that doesn't really matter. If it was more difficult to relearn, than to use a more simple way of doing things then you shouldn'tOn Thu, 2004-26-08 at 16:24 +0100, Calum Benson wrote:On Thu, 2004-08-19 at 14:30, Ronny Schoebel wrote:Just wondering about something that I think is an inconistency in the HIG. The current HIG (2.0 as well as 2.1 working draft) states that notification area icons should perform their default action when doubleclicked. Isn't that a bit inconsistent with the rest of the desktop / panel UI?Yes, I'd say it is-- IIRC there's a bug open somewhere in which we broadly agreed that single-clicking was the way to go for all panel objects. The notification area stuff didn't get much scrutiny before 2.0 was published, unfortunately, so I guess this wasn't picked up...I'd like to see it changed too.Could you file a bug so we don't forget? Cheeri, Calum.While we are on topic, I'd like to register my supreme dislike for double-clicking. No doubt the UI problems posed by it are well known to you, but is there any intention of defaulting GNOME to single click?
change it. (assuming single click really is simpler to an untrained user).Single click work very well in environments where there are few options available to the user on each clickable item and where clicks doesn't apply to multiple selected items. E.g. in information kiosks or in a web browser. In fact I think the key word here is browsing. i.e. the metaphore is more book like, than desktop like. If we look at our physical desktop we can pick up items and manipulate them. The single click represents the picking up part and the double click the manipulation. If we have only single click it becomes difficult to select multiple items and then apply an action
by double click.Another problem is that users may be afraid of activating things by mistake. And given that the major part of all potential users of Gnome will have previous Windows or MacOS experience their first impression of Gnome would
be that it was annoyinng to use, and first impressions often last.If we had started to switch to single click 10 or 15 years ago we could probably have succeded and perhaps saved one or two users from carpal tunnel sundrome but now it is definitively too late. Users will expect the double click just like they will expect the QWERTY keyboard layout. Switching to single click as default would not be a good idea.
Regards Uno Engborg
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