6 ms·

I don't think right click is in the same category. For one thing, the right mouse button is prominent and next to the left one. For another, there was a prett

I don't think right click is in the same category. For one thing, the right mouse button is prominent and next to the left one. For another, there was a pretty well established language that right clicking either did nothing (was harmless) or brought up a contextual menu of advanced actions you could then read.

m_mueller 7y ago
And Apple UI designers (IMO rightfully) were against exactly these hidden context menus. You can see in the older versions of Pages/Keynote/Numbers how UI was meant to work: Instead of right-click menus there was the Info button (promimently found in the shortcut list), which opened a non-modal context menu that could be placed anywhere on screen in a persistent way. This then allowed manipulating all the detail object settings with minimal mouse travel and clicks. I'd say the one thing that MS Office always did really well in comparison is the format paster. Cmd-alt-c/v just isn't as intuitive and discoverable.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Not always. After working for years at Apple I was told (in response to a bug report I filed about missing menu items) that Mac menus might totally change their contents if you PRESSED A MODIFIER KEY. WTF! So every Mac menu conceivably had (has?) 7 sets of contents, 6 of which are essentially secret. Idiotic.
  - m_mueller 7y ago
    totally agreed there - these modifiers should go away. edit: with my post I in no way wanted to indicate that Apple's UI is the pinnacle of design - just that they IMO made the right choice at first by avoiding context menus, or at least keep them optional.
    - jraph 7y ago
      Well, there is this "move to trash" menu item that turns into "really delete" on many file managers. I find it not bad. If you really need it, you will discover it. Otherwise, you can still go to the trash and really delete the file from there. It's safer than having the really delete item by default, and it's there if you need it.
- thrower123 7y ago
  > I'd say the one thing that MS Office always did really well in comparison is the format paster. Cmd-alt-c/v just isn't as intuitive and discoverable Office products have the worst copy/paste of any software I use. Somehow their rich-format copying never does what I want it to do, despite fussing with setting default paste options and learning the advanced keystrokes.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    > Somehow their rich-format copying never does what I want it to do, despite fussing with setting default paste options and learning the advanced keystrokes. I was like you, until I learned what each of the pasting modes are meant to do, and in particular that it works different if you copy/paste within the same document or from an external source. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2012/02/10/tip-how-to-cut-and-paste-without-messing-up-formatting/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2012/02/1... https://support.office.com/en-us/article/control-the-formatting-when-you-paste-text-20156a41-520e-48a6-8680-fb9ce15bf3d6 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/control-the-formatt... Now I still consider it shitty, but at least I'm moderately in control.
    - S_A_P 7y ago
      I just wish that the default was to copy/paste the text and not text, style info, multimedia and who knows what else.
      - jstarks 7y ago
        You can change the default.
  - m_mueller 7y ago
    agreed on copy/paste, though I think that's a problem in general in Microsoft-land due to a lack of standardization across their products. what I meant was specifically the format paste feature (the yellow paintbrush icon in Office apps).
afandian 7y ago
I forget when right-click was introduced (9? 10?) but there was only one mouse button at the time.

m_mueller 7y ago

And Apple UI designers (IMO rightfully) were against exactly these hidden context menus. You can see in the older versions of Pages/Keynote/Numbers how UI was meant to work: Instead of right-click menus there was the Info button (promimently found in the shortcut list), which opened a non-modal context menu that could be placed anywhere on screen in a persistent way. This then allowed manipulating all the detail object settings with minimal mouse travel and clicks. I'd say the one thing that MS Office always did really well in comparison is the format paster. Cmd-alt-c/v just isn't as intuitive and discoverable.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Not always. After working for years at Apple I was told (in response to a bug report I filed about missing menu items) that Mac menus might totally change their contents if you PRESSED A MODIFIER KEY. WTF! So every Mac menu conceivably had (has?) 7 sets of contents, 6 of which are essentially secret. Idiotic.
- m_mueller 7y ago
  totally agreed there - these modifiers should go away. edit: with my post I in no way wanted to indicate that Apple's UI is the pinnacle of design - just that they IMO made the right choice at first by avoiding context menus, or at least keep them optional.
  - jraph 7y ago
    Well, there is this "move to trash" menu item that turns into "really delete" on many file managers. I find it not bad. If you really need it, you will discover it. Otherwise, you can still go to the trash and really delete the file from there. It's safer than having the really delete item by default, and it's there if you need it.
thrower123 7y ago
> I'd say the one thing that MS Office always did really well in comparison is the format paster. Cmd-alt-c/v just isn't as intuitive and discoverable Office products have the worst copy/paste of any software I use. Somehow their rich-format copying never does what I want it to do, despite fussing with setting default paste options and learning the advanced keystrokes.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  > Somehow their rich-format copying never does what I want it to do, despite fussing with setting default paste options and learning the advanced keystrokes. I was like you, until I learned what each of the pasting modes are meant to do, and in particular that it works different if you copy/paste within the same document or from an external source. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2012/02/10/tip-how-to-cut-and-paste-without-messing-up-formatting/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2012/02/1... https://support.office.com/en-us/article/control-the-formatting-when-you-paste-text-20156a41-520e-48a6-8680-fb9ce15bf3d6 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/control-the-formatt... Now I still consider it shitty, but at least I'm moderately in control.
  - S_A_P 7y ago
    I just wish that the default was to copy/paste the text and not text, style info, multimedia and who knows what else.
    - jstarks 7y ago
      You can change the default.
- m_mueller 7y ago
  agreed on copy/paste, though I think that's a problem in general in Microsoft-land due to a lack of standardization across their products. what I meant was specifically the format paste feature (the yellow paintbrush icon in Office apps).

afandian 7y ago

I forget when right-click was introduced (9? 10?) but there was only one mouse button at the time.