Re: [Usability] Double-click in notification area?

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

> While we are on topic, I'd like to register my supreme dislike for
> double-clicking. No doubt the UI problems posed by it are well known to
> you, but is there any intention of defaulting GNOME to single click?

I find single click annoying in proper desktop enviroment and I have
definately read counter surveys that try to debunk the supposed benefits
of single click although I dont know if there is anything authorative.

For handheld devices with limited control intefaces it does make more
sense to minimise the number of clicks required but I'm not convinced that
it is such a good idea for the Desktop, other ideas such as keybindings
and keyboard accelerators might better improve your workflow.  I wish we
could better figure out what specific tasks are improved by single click,
presumably it makes navigating through deep heirarchies faster is not
designed for deep hierarchies.

I believe some one is working on a "Button View" (I believe it was Mac OS
9 Finder that had this) for Nautilus which is a form of Single Click
interface I do find acceptable because it makes the idea more clearly
differnt and distinctly seperate from the old behaviour.  With a button
View users expect things to happen with only one click.
(I choose to disregard Toggle buttons as an unpleasant abberation)
As far as I remember the Button view has clear edges and 'leading' or a
gutter of white space in between buttons to make rubberbanding easier, and
if i recall correctly shift+click and ctrl+click still worked to allow
selection of multiple objects.

The notion behind single click interfaces seems to be that it is
making things easier by being more like the web.  Web pages (good
ones) consistantly indicate that items are clickable by marking
them in blue and underlining text or outlining the items
bounding box.

I have a question for you: If single click is such a good idea why not
Zero click?  Why not have more things activated on mouse over?  This is
another idea brought from the web.

I too agree that this issue affects Nautilus more than anything else.

> only place where I have any problems is the GTK+ file chooser, where
> I'm still required to do lots of double clicking.

Is there a bug report on this yet?
Shouldn't more the details be worked out first before trying to get the
default changed?

- Alan