4 ms·

I'm going to have to disagree, not that discoverability isn't good, but that the addition button isn't worth the complexity. It's a matter of expressiveness an

I'm going to have to disagree, not that discoverability isn't good, but that the addition button isn't worth the complexity. It's a matter of expressiveness and bandwidth. You can do more pointer-related actions with multiple buttons, and they aren't confusing the way keyboard modes are, because you've got feedback on the display at the pointer location. Primary clicks do the important thing, secondary clicks give you a set of other options or an alternative action. It's very easy to pick up given its universality and its usefulness. A single button just requires you to press mode keys with the other hand to get that expressiveness needed in a reasonably intuitive, and powerful, pointer-driven UI. Imagine if we didn't have multitouch and the only gestures we had on touch displays were tap, tap and hold, drag...

chongli 7y ago
I think it's fair to say that everyone on Hacker News is a power user of their computer. Power users do not really know what it's like to be a regular user who is confused by multi-button mice, context menus, and all the rest. Try getting an older person to use a modern computer. They're completely baffled by all of the complexity. They don't know (and don't care) why they should be left-clicking in some cases and right-clicking in others. They prefer an iPad and generally don't use the multitouch gestures, besides pinch/spread for zoom. Simple taps and drags are highly intuitive for them. I would argue that context menus are inferior to keyboard shortcuts anyway. I certainly don't use them once I learn the keyboard shortcuts. I believe we have truly lost something special, since the classic Mac OS is no longer with us. We don't even organize our computers spatially anymore [1], we just rely on search all the time. That's a terrible shame, as spatial memory is the fastest. When you walk into a room in your home, you don't even need to look at the light switch, you just flick it on because you remember exactly where it is. Modern computers with all of their context sensitivity, browser windows, etc. are like a house where the light switches keep moving around to try to guess where you'll be next. [1] https://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/macos-x-beta-14.html https://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/maco...

chongli 7y ago

I think it's fair to say that everyone on Hacker News is a power user of their computer. Power users do not really know what it's like to be a regular user who is confused by multi-button mice, context menus, and all the rest. Try getting an older person to use a modern computer. They're completely baffled by all of the complexity. They don't know (and don't care) why they should be left-clicking in some cases and right-clicking in others. They prefer an iPad and generally don't use the multitouch gestures, besides pinch/spread for zoom. Simple taps and drags are highly intuitive for them. I would argue that context menus are inferior to keyboard shortcuts anyway. I certainly don't use them once I learn the keyboard shortcuts. I believe we have truly lost something special, since the classic Mac OS is no longer with us. We don't even organize our computers spatially anymore [1], we just rely on search all the time. That's a terrible shame, as spatial memory is the fastest. When you walk into a room in your home, you don't even need to look at the light switch, you just flick it on because you remember exactly where it is. Modern computers with all of their context sensitivity, browser windows, etc. are like a house where the light switches keep moving around to try to guess where you'll be next. [1] https://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/macos-x-beta-14.html https://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/maco...