3 ms·

Single-click to open is one of the few hills I am totally planning on dying on. Why click double when you can just click once? As for selecting, just have file

Single-click to open is one of the few hills I am totally planning on dying on. Why click double when you can just click once? As for selecting, just have files be selected on hover. Normally, I just right-click. Double click might have maybe made sense back in the days where clicking on things was expensive and you wanted to prevent miss-clicks but these days I don't see the point. The weird thing is, that is doesn't even take much time to get used to one way or the other. On systems with double-click, I just need a few minutes to get used to it again and vice versa. Since single-click is more ergonomic and more accessible (as some people have trouble double clicking), it should be the default. The whole double-click thing seems to be some sort of weird cargo cult to me but I am willing to hear counter points.

barnabee 3y ago
Open is rarely the action I want most often. I use search/typing in a launcher to open documents and apps, or I’m using a command line. Mostly organising things in directories or doing other admin or secondary tasks when I’m in a file explorer application. I also tend to use list mode on the smallest zoom, and multi- and group-select items a lot, which works terribly with hover select. Single click to select makes sense as selecting one or more files is the precursor to almost every operation. With single click to open my main use case would get much harder and I’d randomly end up opening stuff I don’t want to at least some of the time. No thanks.
aktenlage 3y ago
> As for selecting, just have files be selected on hover. That sounds horrible. How do you do multi-(de)selection then? I tried single-click for a while, but selecting gets awkward.
- electroly 3y ago
  While I think OP's idea isn't great, Windows seems to have an acceptable solution here: you can continue to allow drag-selection, and when clicking while holding down Ctrl/Shift you add to a selection rather than opening. The first click for the drag will be on the background and not on an icon, so it can still start a selection. This is how it works on Windows when you enable one-click.
noisem4ker 3y ago
Fine. What I disagree with is the "select on hover" part, however. Moving a pointing device should not trigger any action by itself*. Make a checkbox appear next to every selectable item (as it's an option in both KDE Dolphin and Windows' Explorer) and we're good. Maybe long-clicking could be an option too, albeit less discoverable. (*) What if I just want to get to another window: should I route around and think about avoiding triggerable elements? What if my hand slips and a bunch of items are selected as a result? Would a delay be needed? What about touchscreens? It seems a fundamentally bad idea, and a much worse accessibility problem than double-clicking.

barnabee 3y ago

Open is rarely the action I want most often. I use search/typing in a launcher to open documents and apps, or I’m using a command line. Mostly organising things in directories or doing other admin or secondary tasks when I’m in a file explorer application. I also tend to use list mode on the smallest zoom, and multi- and group-select items a lot, which works terribly with hover select. Single click to select makes sense as selecting one or more files is the precursor to almost every operation. With single click to open my main use case would get much harder and I’d randomly end up opening stuff I don’t want to at least some of the time. No thanks.

aktenlage 3y ago

> As for selecting, just have files be selected on hover. That sounds horrible. How do you do multi-(de)selection then? I tried single-click for a while, but selecting gets awkward.

electroly 3y ago
While I think OP's idea isn't great, Windows seems to have an acceptable solution here: you can continue to allow drag-selection, and when clicking while holding down Ctrl/Shift you add to a selection rather than opening. The first click for the drag will be on the background and not on an icon, so it can still start a selection. This is how it works on Windows when you enable one-click.

noisem4ker 3y ago

Fine. What I disagree with is the "select on hover" part, however. Moving a pointing device should not trigger any action by itself*. Make a checkbox appear next to every selectable item (as it's an option in both KDE Dolphin and Windows' Explorer) and we're good. Maybe long-clicking could be an option too, albeit less discoverable. (*) What if I just want to get to another window: should I route around and think about avoiding triggerable elements? What if my hand slips and a bunch of items are selected as a result? Would a delay be needed? What about touchscreens? It seems a fundamentally bad idea, and a much worse accessibility problem than double-clicking.