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Posts: 4,783 | Thanked: 1,253 times | Joined on Aug 2007 @ norway
#85
Originally Posted by Texrat View Post
I like the ability of a long click to represent a right mouse click. As a former product designer (and thus heavy user of parametric modeling tools such as SolidWorks) I am a big, BIG evangelist for context-sensitive UI approaches. Hide what the user doesn't need, and bring up what he/she does need based mainly on current context. Beautiful. Reduction of used real estate, reduction of clicks, win for the happy user.

I don't see a better way for right clicks to be emulated on the tablets, unless one considers combining touch with a hardware button press-- and I just don't see that as better. But to each his own.
one could say that context sensitive is one short step up from keyboard shortcuts. at least thats how it seems to be with windows users.

also, as the menu is something you dont see, if you forget about testing whats there, you may miss a feature or more (happened to me with mauku).

then there is the issue of screen sensitivity. if find myself unable to maintain consistent pressure long enough for the menu to come up. often i end up having accidental double-clicks because of that.

this also happened when im dragging things around. either i rest the stylus or finger on the screen with just enough pressure to read it as a click and drag, or i cant maintain the pressure thru the drag and get a unwanted event (like say the files ending up in the wrong dir, mail opening when i want to multiselect, or just having to start over).

then there is trying to hit a small target while getting that menu to appear. bothersome like nothing else when you want to open up a link in a different page. specifically forums or similar that hide links behind small graphical elements.

with a mouse one can drag over to see the hand, then right click. no such thing with the stylus or finger. you only really know if you hit based on the border (but that can be so small as to be hidden under the stylus tip), or the content of the menu.

sure, i could zoom the page. but that takes time, and it will have to be zoomed back out ones the next page opens up so that i can read the full page without having to scroll sideways (i could turn on "fit to page", but that makes the page rendering take even longer then it usually do with all the ajaxy bling that pages have these days).

its a bit of damned if one do, damned if one dont...