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Right click? Hulloh?
Authored by: baba on Dec 13, '02 09:25:33PM

Why not left-middle-click-double-stomp-head-bang on the keyboard? "Right click" is meaningless. If one opts for bells-and-whistles mice, trackpads, or trackballs, a given click will behave only according to its mapping. Not to say that the many options for input devices and their customizability isn't a good thing. They're wonderful. But, please understand that, outside of the world of Willy Loman-esque Windows lemmings. 'Right click' has about as much meaning as the Nike swoosh would have had to Shakespeare (who, as I understand it, was never much one for television).



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Right click? Hulloh?
Authored by: escowles on Dec 14, '02 08:17:05AM
Actually, Macs are the odd-man-out here. Every other mouse-equipped system I've used has at least two mouse buttons. Of course, Macs are often the oddball (like with their multi-fork files and heavy reliance on non-portable filesystem metadata).

Regardless, on every system (including Macs with multi-button mouses) the right mouse button is the standard for contextual menus. I think anyone who isn't being willfully oblivious will understand that he meant "bring up the contextual menu in the normal way".

-Esme

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Contextual menu activation
Authored by: TvE on Dec 14, '02 08:55:18AM
I believe that it's commen knowledge that you access the contextual menu by either right-clicking or control-clicking as the results are the same...
There is no need to waste bandwidth debating whether Mac's are "normal" or "different" due to the number of mouse buttons - if one button is not enough you just plug in an X-buttoned mouse and use it!!!

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Contextual menu activation
Authored by: UltraNurd on Dec 16, '02 12:32:47PM

Sorry for any confusion I may have caused (which I seriously doubt occurred). As fun as it is to be contrarian :oP, right-click means "bring up a contextual menu" on the windows, unix, and macs I use on a regular basis, and is generally true across multiple operating system versions/configurations for each, which is why I used that term. It's the most common, shortest way to say it.

When Apple announced the Pro Mice a few years ago, I was hopeful that they would finally cave and go for two buttons + scroll wheel. I've always been a proponent of the simplicity of the mac, but since contextual menus have been rather key since for sure OS 9, I think it's silly to ignore the hardware end of that particular user interface standard. Scroll wheels are also great. I know very few mac-users who stick to the one-button mice, except for public area computers at various educational institutions, probably because there are fewer parts to break.



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