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

[Ryan McDougall <NQG24419 nifty com>]

On Thu, 2004-26-08 at 23:07 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> 
> 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.

True, but I have yet to find a case where left-click and item then left-
click a menu command does anything evil. Most apps I run are sensibly
designed so as it is they run fine without modification (ie evolution).
I'm interested in finding examples where single click doesn't work, and
the file chooser is the only one I can find.

> 
> 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.")

Perhaps we have different visions of what single-click default might
work like. The way single click works now (nautilus only) is leaps
better than double click IMO. But if I was to use more imagination:

Currently single click is always selection, while double is always
activate. However we don't have select-or-activate hands since they do
both. Rather I'd turn it around and have selectable and activatable
widgets. When the mouse is over a select widget, everything works the
same. When the mouse is over an activatable widget it turns into
Nautilus's finger. 

In cases where the widget is both, one might make activate available via
right mouse button+context menu. Or perhaps make shift the selection
button, so pressing shift gives you a bounding box when the mouse moves.

Anyways just some ideas to spit out.

> 
> 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.

Yeah but we gotta start somewhere. 

> 
> 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.)
> 

With in reason, I think it should be the other way around. Tell everyone
we're changing, so go fix your apps. Then release and see what gets
broken. My guess is "not much".

Cheers,
Ryan