Re: [Usability] Selection problems in List view

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel borgmann gmail com>]

On 5/12/05, Diego Moya (a.k.a. TuringTest) <turingt gmail com> wrote:
> > > I would also ask your opinions on the validity of a "single-click
> > > actions" mode. In a perfect world, mouses would have two buttons
> > > (ha!): one for selecting items and the other for performing actions on
> > > them. Overloading the left button with both "actions" and "selections"
> > > brings to the must hated "double-click" syndrome
> >
> > We don't (yet) live in a perfect world, and people tend to do what they
> > did before, so they will flame us to death if we remove double-click ;).
> 
> With a semantics of "left button for selection", double-click could be
> used like a Shift-click or Ctrl-click. List widgets already work that
> way in many systems. It's just that the "default" action would never
> be "Open", but always "extend the selection".

I'm a bit confused, do you suggest that a doubleclick just doesn't
activate anything, so you'd have to use the context menu?

> > > (have you ever seen users double-clicking a link in the browser?).
> >
> > Gosh, my mum does it all the time :D.
> >
> 
> That's because in everything but Web browsers, one click Selects and
> two clicks Opens.

This is not exactly true, everything that resembles a button is
activated on single click. I understand left click as "touching" an
item and ideally it should be obvious from the appearance of the item,
whether touching it will trigger some action or not. But even if it's
not obvious (like links in web browsers), I'm not sure if this is
really a problem, as long as the action is not harmful. Despite the
occasional annoyance, users seem to manage pretty well so far. :)
Maybe one way to make it more obvious would be to use different
cursors. Like a hand if clicking will select and something else if
clicking will activate. Web browsers use pointing hands, maybe we
should use the same for everything that touch-activates? Like buttons
and panel items.