<strong>Will there ever be a triple-click? I mean, we have a double click and a single click, why can't we have a triple-click?</strong><hr></blockquote>
There is. Have you tried it? Address bar in IE, text in TextEdit, document in Word, .....
Some applications use triple-clicks. For example, many word processors will highlight (select) an entire paragraph if one places the cursor anywhere within a paragraph and triple-clicks. If a URL in the navigation bar of OmniWeb is triple-clicked, the entire URL is highlighted.
I think an OS-wide triple-click would be undesirable because users don't always click consistently: the OS would have to understand the difference between a single click followed by a double-click, and a triple-click. Might be frustrating for people who are click-challenged.
All kidding aside, Apple played with hundreds of ways for the GUI to be. Double-clicks, triple-clicks, shift-clicks, folders that could be expanded like a slinky by dragging the top layer up, and many others. The Apple labs did extensive research on how humans remember things and where human eyes naturally move.
For example, some early non-release version of the finder (I believe on Apple II hardware, probably the GS ) was adjusted so that cancel buttons were red and the ok buttons were green. The labs thought this would tie into our traffic training and make things easier for beginners. What they found was that red buttons attract the mouse cursor. There's a significant tendency to push red buttons when the conscious mind intends to push the green button next to the red. I don't know if that would be true of modern computer users, but at least one of the former researchers has publicly complained that the red button on X does just that, leading people to close pages that they might better have left open, and that then the users have to navigate back to those pages again when they realize their mistakes.
All colleges that have a psychology department do this kind of research too. Undergrads can make good lunch money being test subjects. A constant stream of fresh brains is needed because these simple, repetitive experiments tend to train the subjects, just as Windows users tend to find the Macs slow or inconvenient after switching. A PC user is used to zoning out at different times than a Mac user, so both find the others machines slow. Really good examples are Internet Explorer, which is blazing fast on the PC because it's always loaded, and reading a PDF document on OS X, which is so much better than on a PC it's barely believable.
Apple tried multiple button mice, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried as many as one per digit. They found that users were confused enough by moving the mouse instead of steering it. There's a tendency in people who have never seen a GUI to steer the mouse like a car, which just moves the pointer to the top of the screen and wiggles it back and forth slightly, and of course at that time almost nobody had used a GUI.
Anyway, triple-clicking has selected a paragraph for a long time. I know there are apps that will run on the original Mac that use multiple clicks for selecting words and paragraphs.
Comments
<strong>Will there ever be a triple-click? I mean, we have a double click and a single click, why can't we have a triple-click?</strong><hr></blockquote>
There is. Have you tried it? Address bar in IE, text in TextEdit, document in Word, .....
I think an OS-wide triple-click would be undesirable because users don't always click consistently: the OS would have to understand the difference between a single click followed by a double-click, and a triple-click. Might be frustrating for people who are click-challenged.
double-click: word
triple-click: line
quadruple click: paragraph (page?)
If you quintuple-click on a page, it selects all the text on not only that page, but every page you have ever visited and ever will visit.
..And all the pages linked from them as well.
It will take awhile to process, so you may have to wait a bit before copying it all.
[ 07-07-2002: Message edited by: MozillaMan ]</p>
For example, some early non-release version of the finder (I believe on Apple II hardware, probably the GS ) was adjusted so that cancel buttons were red and the ok buttons were green. The labs thought this would tie into our traffic training and make things easier for beginners. What they found was that red buttons attract the mouse cursor. There's a significant tendency to push red buttons when the conscious mind intends to push the green button next to the red. I don't know if that would be true of modern computer users, but at least one of the former researchers has publicly complained that the red button on X does just that, leading people to close pages that they might better have left open, and that then the users have to navigate back to those pages again when they realize their mistakes.
All colleges that have a psychology department do this kind of research too. Undergrads can make good lunch money being test subjects. A constant stream of fresh brains is needed because these simple, repetitive experiments tend to train the subjects, just as Windows users tend to find the Macs slow or inconvenient after switching. A PC user is used to zoning out at different times than a Mac user, so both find the others machines slow. Really good examples are Internet Explorer, which is blazing fast on the PC because it's always loaded, and reading a PDF document on OS X, which is so much better than on a PC it's barely believable.
Apple tried multiple button mice, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried as many as one per digit. They found that users were confused enough by moving the mouse instead of steering it. There's a tendency in people who have never seen a GUI to steer the mouse like a car, which just moves the pointer to the top of the screen and wiggles it back and forth slightly, and of course at that time almost nobody had used a GUI.
Anyway, triple-clicking has selected a paragraph for a long time. I know there are apps that will run on the original Mac that use multiple clicks for selecting words and paragraphs.