The "
right click" (
referring to a
computer mouse) is the less
formal name of the
contextual click. Most modern
operating systems and/or mouse
drivers allow you to change the "
handedness" of your mouse (though for
consistency reasons I don't know many
left-handed people that do). On most
platforms (
Windows,
Linux, and
Macintoshes with
two button mice attached to them), the second
mouse button accomplishes this
task. On older (and
default)
Macintosh systems, with
one-button mice, holding down
control while
clicking brings up
contextual menu choices.
Typically, this
alternate click is used to bring up a series of
applicable and
commonly used
options (actions) with regard to the
currently pointed-to
object. However, the
usability of the right-click has been shown to be quite
dubious. Many novice users do not take advantage of this
button (and thus it was left out of the
Macintosh UI design for simplicity). Since the
result of this
action varies from
situation to
situation, it has been shown to confuse less
experienced users. The right click simply does not work, as an option.
You'll
notice that in a
major application where usability is well tested (such as Microsoft Office), all tasks available through a right-click are found in the menus. This is
because the
discoverability of a feature located in only contextual menus is low. When looking for the
function to
accomplish a task, users have been commonly shown to do
everything but actually
click on the
object. In many
temp-agency tests,
right-click options are
forbidden from being
correct answers in
proficiency examinations; many
professional environments work in
keystroke shortcut patterns and
navigation of the menus. There is a balance for
usability between the
convenience for mid-range to
power users, and the
discoverability for the large
base of
novices.
Office's two latest versions (for the Macintosh and the PC) have solved this in two
different ways, each appropirate for their task.
Macintosh Office 2001 has the new
Formatting Palette, a Mac-only feature that gives you a
toolbar that shows you what applies to the current selected
object onscreen. The large
floating (as compared to docked)
toolbar is similar to others in very
Mac-like programs, such as those
employed in
Adobe Photoshop. It allows
users to escape the
right-click by seeing what is available when an
object is
highlighted. This is very
important, since many
Mac users still have
one-button systems. Though the options are still there,
Office: Mac presents many
alternatives for many ranges of
users.
In
Office XP, there is a
concept of
On-Object UI. Whenever an object is
selected rather than requiring the user to perform a
right-click, it presents them the options of what to do as a new
UI on the
object itself (without
further interaction with the users). This active presentation allows even
Windows users, the ones supposedly
familiar with the
right click, the
ability to
discover alternatives.
The right click is a tool in a
programmer’s
arsenal to expose features to the user in a
clean and
intuitive manner. It has been around for some time (the days of
Windows 3.1 and earlier on other systems), and has seen eventual "
native" support in
MacOS X, according to Steve Jobs (though the
default USB mouse drivers from 8.6+ supported
contextual click). Users have never gotten used to the
concept of this
mouse action, and rely more heavily on such mouse
procedures as
drag and drop,
double click, and of course,
single click.
In recent years we are
beginning to see
mice with many more
buttons:
Microsoft, a place that is mildly agressive in their UI choices (but careful since
BOB),
produces an
optical mouse now with two top
buttons, the
wheel, and two buttons on the side. Above the
wheel, these are not used in any
meaningfully way in the
UI, because any
dependency on their
optional features would be
ridiculous.
In the end, the right-click is nice to have
around, but is oftentimes
outweighed by users who are more
keyboard-heavy, or ones who
understand tasks as a series of clicks, and not
logical relations between actions. The "more information about the current object" is great for people who are
curious as to how to
interact with
something, but is not a
wonderful solution in and of itself. More “
active” and “
intelligent”
UI designs need to be sought out for the
human-computer interaction of the
future.