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

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

The only thing I enjoy about single clicking is being able to select an
item, and view item-specific details in the status bar or information
bar (eg size of item).

I find it frustrating when a single click activates an item, I cannot
simply select it to see it's size (if in icon view).

However this could be accomplished on mouse-over as well ...  Mousing
past an item results in that item's details being displayed in the
status bar, for example.

I agree that double-clicking is onerous, but there should be no loss in
functionality - I don't want to right-click an item to see details about
it.  At times the right-click menu can take a long time to appear, only
to see an item's size?  Right click and then choose "Select" seems
overly complicated just to select it.



On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 07:56, John Kodis wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 12:02:13PM +0200, Daniele Levorato wrote:
> 
> > All the other Desktop out there works with double click... there's
> > no reason to make GNOME different, breaking a standard.
> 
> This line of reasoning seems like an admission that Gnome can never do
> anything any better than any other desktop, since doing things better
> would require doing them differently, and could cause confusion.
> 
> > You said that nobody has shown you a good argument against single
> > click... but in my opinion you haven't argued too anything really
> > valid against double-click.
> 
> There are at least two fairly strong arguments: double-click
> activation is used inconsistently, and requires an action that can be
> difficult to perform for people with limited mobility or in limited
> environments such as on kiosks or palm computers.
> 
> In addition to the inconsistency and difficulty, double-click
> activation seems to violate another tenant of good UI design: that of
> optimizing for the common cases.  At least in my own use of the
> desktop, there are several common actions: activating an object,
> dragging an object, and performing a menu-selected action on an
> object; and one relatively uncommon action: selecting one or more
> object to perform some action on at a later time.  Yet, wherever
> double-click activation is in effect these priorities are reversed:
> selecting an object is the easiest thing to do, while the more
> frequently performed actions require an additional, albeit minor,
> effort.
> 
> How about this as a possible approach:
> 
> - Left click activates (everywhere!)
> 
> - Left press begins a drag-n-drop operation
> 
> - Right click pops up a menu like now, but with "Select" (or perhaps
>   "Toggle selection" or "Deselect") rather than "Open" as the first
>   menu item.
> 
> - Selection of one or more items continues to be available through
>   control-left-click, for the experienced users who seem to be the
>   target audience for this type of feature.
> 
> - Double-click activation is relegated to the dustbin of computer
>   history, except for its continued use in legacy desktops where it
>   serves as a textbook example of optimizing for uncommon cases in UI
>   design classes.
> 
> -- John Kodis.
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