Re: [Usability] Double-click in notification area?

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2004-08-27 at 12:05 +0900, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-26-08 at 22:28 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-08-27 at 11:14 +0900, Ryan McDougall wrote:

> > single click, be it in the file manager or other UI elements (like a
> > list).  Namely, how do you differentiate between selection and
> > activation?  For the file manager icon view, it's solvable - selection
> 
> This is a good question, but one must remember double clicking came from
> the one button Mac. In practise I always right-click to select something
> since that will select the item *and* give you a context menu. After all
> there is NO use of selecting something without wanting to perform some
> operation on it immediately there-after.

Except that not all actions are in the context menu, nor should they be.
In quite a few applications, there are tons of toolbar icons or menu
entries for interacting with a selected item, and filling the context
menu with all of these would be quite infeasible.

> 
> > must always be done by rubber banding, for example, or keyboard
> > controls.  For something like a list view (be it the file manager, my
> > inbox in evolution, etc.) how can you select an entry using the mouse
> > without activating/opening it?
> > 
> 
> I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but to select and act on a item
> without "activating" (double click action) it, use right mouse button.
> To select a lot of things, use the shift key and left or right click.

Let's look at my Evolution inbox, then.  Simply selecting a mail causes
the message to display in the preview pane.  Double clicking opens a new
window with the message contents.  I only ever use a context menu when
replying to a mail (and even then only sometimes), but I do select a lot
of messages as I read through thread archives.  Without double click,
I'd always have to open the mail in a new window, or always have to open
a context menu just to close it again.

(I can think of a few changes to Evolution that might get rid of this
particular problem.  Not all applications are so easily "fixed.")

> 
> In daily usage I have no problems whatsoever, so maybe you can point out
> some examples of things you can do with double-click, that I can't with
> single?

It's a bit hard to get a lot of examples since GNOME *does* require
double click.  I have my desktop configured as single click as well, but
then, you and I are only 2 users out of many, so we can't claim our
usage patterns actually mean jack.

Patch GTK to make all widgets use single-click as activation, and see
how many apps break, and find ways to fix them.  Then we might get a
decent picture of the desktop as a whole.  (Or maybe someone else has an
idea on an easier way to find all the places single-click activation
would break the desktop.)

> 
> Cheers,
> Ryan
> 
>