Double clicking is evil
To both a novice and an advanced user, there is no conceptual difference between pressing another button on the mouse and double clicking. Well, actually there is one: you can proceed with superior comfort and greater speed after a bit practicing of the former, while the latter will remain awkward forever. Therefore, it could greatly improve usability if the pointing device had additional buttons to replace this vulgar action. Chording (simultaneously pressing multiple buttons) is also an option. See Wikipedia: Chorded keyboard for more information.
As you probably already know, I'm all against any form of double, triple or even quadruple pushing the same button on either the keyboard or the mouse. As a historical note, I'm positive that no human with expert knowledge in the field - or even having any trace of commonsense - would recommend such crippling of ergonomics and usability as banging the same button in succession.
I think they have implemented this because the interface they have copied used only a single mouse button (Apple), whose designers have taken some dirty shortcuts to get their job done with little effort. Note that having a user interface that uses a single button mouse can be a neat idea and very novice-friendly if done right, but the same can't be told about one requiring double clicking.
As you probably already know, I'm all against any form of double, triple or even quadruple pushing the same button on either the keyboard or the mouse. As a historical note, I'm positive that no human with expert knowledge in the field - or even having any trace of commonsense - would recommend such crippling of ergonomics and usability as banging the same button in succession.
I think they have implemented this because the interface they have copied used only a single mouse button (Apple), whose designers have taken some dirty shortcuts to get their job done with little effort. Note that having a user interface that uses a single button mouse can be a neat idea and very novice-friendly if done right, but the same can't be told about one requiring double clicking.
Wow, what a rant :)
ReplyDeleteAlthough double clicking sure is a pain in the bottocks, but if you ask me multiple input device chording (ie. pressing command on the keyboard AND clicking the one and only button on the mouse) is even weirder.
Luckily, under M$WIN we've got the great freeware AutoHotkey tool so you can remap your Nth mouse button to act as a dobuleclick by writing 1 line'o'script, compiling it and making it run automatically.
Hey, what did you expect? ;-D This is part of a series related to computer ergonomy. As usability of today's computers are so last millennium, they could surely be improved upon. You may be right in that in this post I give few alternatives. That's because I thought the solutions were pretty self-evident. I could write follow-up posts with mock-ups about my ideas if you're interested.
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And of course you can solve any problem with third-party freeware tools, but that still doesn't justify bad user interface design. By the way, the FOSS solution isn't much more complicated, and in this case you have multiple choices: xmacro, xvkbd, xautomation and xbindkeys.
Thankfully, most interfaces I use work with single clicks, but this is a bit random, as it is on almost any system. Take for example vista's desktop. They have now realized after the decades what a 5-year-old would have told them instantly: single clicking is a more ergonomic, more comfortable, less tiring, less confusing and faster alternative to double clicking. And by the way, I forgot to mention the joy of having an additional function on some systems for two consecutive single clicks that makes the user experience even more "fun" (ie. easier to confuse). Actually, this has been in my mind for many years now, but back then, I thought so called "experts" have "invented" and designed these things well and it's me the one who is in error.
Nowadays, I've taken up the habit of applying a healthy amount skepticism, especially in my own field! ;-) If you don't like your keyboard layout then replace it. If you don't like some aspect of your software then change it. If you can't change it, then scrap it altogether for one that you could! :-D
"A computer scientist who is being ignorant of open source software is just like a mechanic who takes his own bike in for every adjustment or repair."
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Multiple device chording you ask? I agree that if you have more than a hundred keys on the keyboard, why on Earth would you be required to simultaneously press a mouse button to take action?! :-D However, it's actually much better for your arms if you use none of your mouse buttons and substitute keys on the keyboard instead. You can also position the cursor with higher accuracy this way while drawing, for example. Try it if you don't believe me! The X way of doing this is the same as above, but I'm sure you'll eventually find a solution for winblows.
Furthermore, while chording mouse buttons isn't ideal, I presume it's still more ergonomic than double clicking.
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And I see you have also posted to your blog recently. Should I take this as a sign of rebirth...? :) I've signed up for its RSS, just in case. ;)
Cheers!