Re: [Usability] triple mouse click behavior

[Boris Goldowsky <boris alum mit edu>]

On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 17:24, John F Dixon Iv wrote:
> Please correct me if i am wrong, but in most/all applications triple 
> clicking on text selects the entire line, correct? (I haven't really 
> examined this issue deeply) I don't know for whom or why this is useful. 
> If someone could provide an example, i would love to hear it, i am 
> genuinely interested. 

A few use cases, then:

 - selecting one line of code from a program or script
 - selecting one command or one error message from a shell window
 - selecting one item from a to-do list, outline, or other line-based
text document
 - selecting one data point from a file of experimental output


> Personally, i rarely, if ever use it. On the other 
> hand, when using word processors for example, i frequently cut and paste 
> individual sentences to move them around inside my documents. What would 
> be the pros and cons of making triple mouse clicks select an entire 
> sentence for some applications such as word processors? Personally, i 
> think this would be a great improvement. Selecting a sentence is 
> relatively hard because it requires such fine motor coordination 
> especially if you want to select the punctuation and white space exactly.

It seems key that all the examples I can think of are explicitly
line-based data formats (at least by convention, if not the rules of the
language).  These are very common in Unix-like systems, and supported by
lots of tools like 'grep' and 'join', which is I think why the
triple-click behavior has been useful enough to be used in most
applications.

When dealing with other sorts of information where lines are essentially
irrelevant, the generalization of the idea might be that the triple
click selects some sort of "record" or "container" that is larger than a
word.  In fact, in Mozilla and Epiphany, inside a table, the
triple-click selection is bounded by the  table cell you click in (you
don't get the whole row).  The sentence doesn't seem like a bad choice
if the application is designed for editing natural-language text and has
no other type of structure.

Bng