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

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 23:55 +0100, John Spray wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 23:32, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> > Steel the middle button for select.  Let left button drag the select for
> > the default option.  Use middle button drag for option actions.
> 
> There are many two button mice in circulation.  No critical

Not to mention one button mice.  Bitch as much as people do about Macs
(by default) having mice with only one button, it's nice when the UI
only *needs* one button.  You simply cannot use GNOME currently with a
one button mouse, unless you start mapping keyboard controls to mimic
the second button.  And then you end up with keyboard mapping different
from the defaults, as there is no way currently to mimic the second
button using only the first button and a keyboard modifier.  (i.e., I
can in no way click with button one on an object and get the context
menu.)

> > I love the wheel, and I do not like random text being pasted into my
> > documents.  I select more often then paste, and I prefer to paste by
> > keyboard and context menu to be certain of my action.
> Gnome serves unix power users as well as less experienced end users.  In
> the present state, the end users are not harmed by that which they do
> not know, and the power users are satisfied that their long-established
> X clipboard remains.  To attack either group would be unwise, any
> solution must avoid alienating either group.
> 
> I speak, as you can probably guess, as someone very much enamoured of
> button-2 paste.  Select, click.  Much neater than select, ctrl+c, click
> on target, ctrl+v.  A genuine time saver, particularly since I might not
> even have my hand on the lower-left of the keyboard to begin with.

Of course, those operations are *not* the same.  Two different
clipboards.  Not that that really matters in the common case.

I certainly don't think any necessary functionality should be bound to
the middle/third button.  It just complicates the interaction.  If we
instead said that middle-click selects, but shift-click *also* selects,
that's fine.  Then users with one mouse button are fine, and users with
three mouse buttons have a shortcut.  But some piece of hardware that
many users don't have or simply don't realize is there should not become
required for using the computer.
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.