Why isn't "click-and-hold" taken more advantage of?

jone · December 12, 2004 9:07PM

Seems like some programs use the click-and-hold idea to fully utilize the one-button approach, but why isn't this incredibly useful feature present in most native Apple software? Rather we have to control-click and command-click and what other archaic, cryptic, unintuitive nonense to get this added functionality. I'd love to be able to hold the mouse button down under Safari and get a context menu that allows me to open a link in a new tab, or hold the button down in OS X to get a file's info. This is how Tablet PCs operated when they only had the pen tip to work with, and it worked so well.

I just wonder what their philosophy is on this, if they are going for user friendliness and ease of use. Instead I've been learning a lot of keyboard commands.

johnq · December 13, 2004 12:15AM

Beats me.

FinderPop was great but unless click-and-hold is truly system-wide, then it's just a tease.

Apple? If you are so determined to ship a single button mouse then this would shut up all the typical complainers (and be truly useful).

low-fi · December 13, 2004 4:24AM

FYI: Firefox has it.

boukman · December 13, 2004 10:34AM

When I switched about 2 years ago and discovered click-and-hold, I actually thought that it was system-wide, and that it was a much more elegant solution than having a 2nd mouse button. However, I was sad to discover soon after that it wasn't system-wide. I wonder why nobody has created a haxie to make click-and-hold a system-wide thing yet.

As far as Apple is concerned, I understand they have their "Human Interface Guidelines" that they put a lot of work in, but maybe they ought to figure if click-and-hold wouldn't be a natural extension that they could include in future versions of OS X.

live4ever · December 13, 2004 11:29AM

OmniWeb 5 has this too.

mcq · December 13, 2004 11:49AM

Dunno. I've never really used click-and-hold, so I haven't noticed about the software. If they add the functionality in addition to the standard ctrl-click, etc. then that's cool.

In any case, it never caught on with me for 3 reasons:

1. Already used ctrl-click

2. Holding down the mouse button on a laptop is annoying

3. It's unintuitive to my muscle memory

I'm way too used to "holding" the click on the mouse for just what it takes to click.

buonrotto · December 13, 2004 1:33PM

Seems like a good idea to not only make use of this kind of thing, but control the hold time to some degree via a system-wide preference, and, more importantly, find a consistent type of behavior/result for click-and-hold. I mean, there's the click-and-hold for the pop up menus in the Dock, the click-and-hold context menus (very similar to the Dock) in some apps, and there's the click-and-hold behavior that treats a selection -- usually text -- as a single object in an app like TextEdit or in certain places in Safari.

maccrazy · December 16, 2004 11:56AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JonE

Seems like some programs use the click-and-hold idea to fully utilize the one-button approach, but why isn't this incredibly useful feature present in most native Apple software? Rather we have to control-click and command-click and what other archaic, cryptic, unintuitive nonense to get this added functionality. I'd love to be able to hold the mouse button down under Safari and get a context menu that allows me to open a link in a new tab, or hold the button down in OS X to get a file's info. This is how Tablet PCs operated when they only had the pen tip to work with, and it worked so well.

I just wonder what their philosophy is on this, if they are going for user friendliness and ease of use. Instead I've been learning a lot of keyboard commands.

it takes too long to work. If you hold down the mouse on the dock it does take a while to pop-up. Ctrl-click is faster

groverat · December 20, 2004 8:14AM

I use click-and-hold all the time. I really miss FinderPop.

zapchud · December 20, 2004 10:08AM

I don't use click'n'hold because it is slow and clunky compared to issuing the contextual menus with ctrl-click or right click.

mpmoriarty · December 20, 2004 9:10PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MacCrazy

it takes too long to work. If you hold down the mouse on the dock it does take a while to pop-up. Ctrl-click is faster

I don't know. A half a second on my iBook is fast enough for me.

maccrazy · December 21, 2004 10:49AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MPMoriarty

I don't know. A half a second on my iBook is fast enough for me.

but it's frustrating holding down the mouse on itunes for half a second when you can right-click or ctrl-click and get it instantly. That's my opinion.

boukman · December 21, 2004 10:57AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MacCrazy

but it's frustrating holding down the mouse on itunes for half a second when you can right-click or ctrl-click and get it instantly. That's my opinion.

I don't think anyone here is talking about removing the ability to right-click or ctrl-click. We'd just like to see Apple implement yet a 3rd option which would be click-and-hold. It could even be something that you could enable/disable in the system preferences.

maccrazy · December 21, 2004 5:28PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Boukman

I don't think anyone here is talking about removing the ability to right-click or ctrl-click. We'd just like to see Apple implement yet a 3rd option which would be click-and-hold. It could even be something that you could enable/disable in the system preferences.

No I agree, flexibility is good. I think it might confuse new users who aren't as sure about what they're doing and therefore click for a long time as they are thinking about it. I'd to see more flexibility and user preferences in most areas though.

johnq · December 21, 2004 7:38PM

editing

Why isn't "click-and-hold" taken more advantage of?

Comments