Re: [Usability] Copy/double click feedback

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 20:19 +0200, lorenzo wrote:

> The first one concerns the copy operation. This operation provides no
> feedback at all to user.
> You cannot know if you pressed correctly the keyboard shortcut, if the
> object can be copied and so on.
> I often prefer to use a cut followed by a paste/undo to be sure of the
> operation.
> The system should provide some feedback for this: the selected part
> could blink a couple of times and for the failure of the operation a
> red border could blink, or something like that.

Neat idea, but many apps would probably have to implement custom visual
feedback mechanisms of their own to deal with anything but the simplest
types of copy-able object, which would mean extra work for developers
and would probably result in inconsistencies between apps.

It would be nicer if something at the toolkit level could deal with
this-- e.g. in MacOS X, whenever you use a keyboard shortcut, the
corresponding menu title (or item, if visible) flashes a couple of
times.  But Apple patented that :/

> The second one is about double click.
> You cannot know if you did the two clicks or a double-click. If you
> are too slow you just stay there staring at the selected icon. This is
> sometime a problem for non-expert users.

Yes, this is a long-standing concern for all desktops really.  I don't
really have any idea what a workable solution might be; better brains
than ours[1] haven't really come up with anything in the past 20 years
or more that WIMP desktops have been pervasive.

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] Well, certainly better brains than mine :)

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems