Re: [Usability] Go/Send buttons

[Simon Francis <thejello gmail com>]

I like the go button and send buttons in instant messangers. They have many uses

-I usually copy and paste with the mouse. After pasting a link into my browser or text into my instant messanger, I want to be able to send that right away without having to move my hand from my mouse. 
-Frequently when chatting, I will type something in, but not want to send it right away. For example, I might want to read it over, wait for the other person to finish saying something, or just wait for something to occur. I'm usually using the mouse by this point, so it would be a pain to have to reach to the keyboard to send. 
-Instant messanger programs have shortcuts like shift-enter or other modify+enter that does something like insert a new line instead of send the message. By the time I notice I've hit one of these by accident, I'm using the mouse so its nice to be able to quickly hit the send button.
-Its consistant with email programs which have send buttons.

I really wish Firefox's quick search bar had a go button (or equivalent). All the time I find myself copying text directly from a webpage or instant messanger conversation into there to search for it on google, of course using the mouse. Because there is no button, after pasting what I want to search for into there I have to move my hand off the mouse to hit enter.

On 01 Feb 2006 20:05:56 +0100, Soeren Sandmann <sandmann daimi au dk> wrote:

Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com> writes:

> On the other hand, every time someone clicks the Go button just
> because it's there, the obvious thing to do, they take two or three
> seconds longer than they would by pressing Enter. (And unlike most
> mouse vs. keyboard fights, the mouse users can't use the time-to-mouse
> to think about what to do next, because this is a Web browser or an
> instant messenger where they're going to need to wait several seconds
> for the result anyway.)

One time where the go button might be useful is when you are pasting
an url into the location. In that case there is no keyboard-to-mouse
transition.

Not that I'm arguing for keeping the go button. GNOME has the utterly
stupid middle-click paste feature which means for most users, that the
'select something, then paste to replace it' idiom simply doesn't
work. So pasting URLs is likely not very common.


Soren
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