Menus: Click, then hold or let go?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I used to always click and then hold, well, because you had to or the menu would disappear. I don't know when it happened, but I never click and hold anymore. I always click and let go, and then look for menu item I want and click that. I suppose it's more comfortable than holding. Does anyone out there click and hold?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BRussell

    I used to always click and then hold, well, because you had to or the menu would disappear. I don't know when it happened, but I never click and hold anymore. I always click and let go, and then look for menu item I want and click that. I suppose it's more comfortable than holding. Does anyone out there click and hold?



    i'm already lost.
  • Reply 2 of 18
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    I click and let go now too. I use Windows enough to make this my habit.



    FYI, back in the oldie times of the Mac, you had to click and hold down on the mouse button to navigate the menus on the Mac OS. A menu item selection was made when you released the mouse button. Clicking would pop the menu out then immediately, it would close again.



    I think it was in System 7 that an extension was introduced (that, like so many little changes, was derived from a third party hack) that created what were called sticky menus. This extension let you click on the menu and click again on a menu item to select something, like how it worked in Windows. Ever since, both the old click-and-release method for menu item selection and the more conventional (in the ocmputing world) click-and-click-again menu item selection method have been supported.
  • Reply 3 of 18
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    i'm already lost.



    Oh yeah, I guess it has been a long time. So long that some people never experienced the joy of having to hold the mouse button down when you were looking at menus. It was a good way to get carpal tunnel syndrome.
  • Reply 4 of 18
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    I use both.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BRussell

    Oh yeah, I guess it has been a long time. So long that some people never experienced the joy of having to hold the mouse button down when you were looking at menus. It was a good way to get carpal tunnel syndrome.



    oh i see what youre talking about now... i actually do nearly everything with keyboard shortcuts.
  • Reply 6 of 18
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    I swap back and forth.
  • Reply 7 of 18
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    I, too, swing both ways.
  • Reply 8 of 18
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ShawnJ

    I, too, swing both ways.



    the mouse doesn't swing, but pound.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member
    I "Clicked an held" on my Amiga computers.

    But on Windows and Apple I "Click and let go".

    I find the Microsoft approach better on this one.

    Holding the mouse button is more "intensive" for your finger muscles.
  • Reply 10 of 18
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    I mostly click and hold. I'm more likely to mis-click if I click and let go because I might slip and choose a menu item above or below my choice when i do decide to click again, whereas click and hold feels more solid and I can just let go when I'm over my choice.



    But I use a really light touch on my mouse, trackpad and keyboard and never have pains. I did in 1994-5 but I adjusted my habits to keep my hands loose and all is well.
  • Reply 11 of 18
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Well, if it makes any of you feel better, Windows' menus didn't have any hysterisis built in, so if your pointer went over a sub-menu header, it would open immediately even if the contents weren't ready. Sometimes you would get stuck waiting for the font sub-menu items to display before you could continue down the main menu. (The fonts sub-menu is usually near the top of a main menu too, so it happened fairly frequently. Luckily, once you did waited for it once, it was faster after that.) Also, if you went to pick a font or other item in one of those sub-menus, you had to drag your cursor directly to the right, then straight down the list. If you tried to go directly to an item, i.e., move on the diagonal, the menu would close before you got to the thing you wanted. Amazing people got anything done.
  • Reply 12 of 18
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    I have to admit Miocrosoft beat Apple on this one.



    How so?

    The Mac supports both methods...



    Also realize that menu contents have grown significantly and that interaction techniques have followed accordingly. Click and hold made more sense when there were only a handful of menus with a few items each. Now, with many more items in each menu, users frequently pause to visually scan for the desired item. While scanning some people prefer to not hold down a mouse button.



    Also, with a non multi-tasking OS, the user needed feedback that all processing was on hold. The most reliable feedback was to simply have them hold down the button. Button held down = no processing. With click/release/move/click, users could accidentally do only the first click and leave their system locked up.



    Yes... there were very good reasons for the original Mac way. It's a good thing they think of these things!
  • Reply 13 of 18
    I click-and-let-go, but most of the time I just use keyboard shortcuts, if available.



    what's click and clack?
  • Reply 14 of 18
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    If I know that the option I'm looking for is two or three sub-menus deep (or I don't know where it is), I click. Otherwise, I click and hold.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BRussell

    I used to always click and then hold, well, because you had to or the menu would disappear. I don't know when it happened, but I never click and hold anymore. I always click and let go, and then look for menu item I want and click that. I suppose it's more comfortable than holding. Does anyone out there click and hold?



    Now that you mention this ...er...issue i just realized

    that it is still possible to click and hold. For some reason

    i've forgot this ...er...feature.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Demonstrating a grasp of past tense does little to further ones argument.



    Obviously MS went with click-and-let-go first. The point was that this didn't "beat" anyone unless at the time it was superior. Back then, optimal interaction techniques were different, and Apple purposefly chose one over the other. Care to address the motivations for these decisions as detailed 5 posts back?
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