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Don't Click It

dontclick.it

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Re: Don't Click It

#31

Post by potatolicious »

Kejistan wrote: post #4

Interesting site, but I really cannot understand why the mouse click is a "bad" thing. Having pages do nothing unless you explicitly click is a great thing, that site showed me exactly how annoying it can be to control an interface that wants to rearrange itself all the time based on mouse movements. Moving the mouse to a link and having the link move AWAY because you happened to move across one of the links between…

IMHO there is nothing here intrinsically better about the experience - what they seem to have done is simply take a good old Flash interface and ripped out the click and replaced it with mouseover events.

Sorry, but I think you have to go a few steps further if you really want to seamlessly eliminate the click (which begs the question: why?).

The UI was annoying - the same UI that I've run into for the new Sims game - an over-reliance on mouse-over events, popping menus in and out of existence based on minute, often accidental motion. You have no idea how hard it is to, say, buy a bed and choose the wood finish for your Sim, just because the UI sucks.

Re: Don't Click It

#32

Post by imd »

Something that I think is similar is dwell-clicking software (for disabled people, I think--just like the one-handle faucet).

Re: Don't Click It

#33

Post by cduan »

Kejistan wrote: post #4

Interesting site, but I really cannot understand why the mouse click is a "bad" thing. Having pages do nothing unless you explicitly click is a great thing, that site showed me exactly how annoying it can be to control an interface that wants to rearrange itself all the time based on mouse movements. Moving the mouse to a link and having the link move AWAY because you happened to move across one of the links between…

Interface tries to intelligently rearrange itself, and ends up annoying user? Reminds me of that old MS Office "feature" of hiding unused menu items, which bugged me like crazy.

Re: Don't Click It

#34

Post by jasonkester »

Perhaps they couldn't get the domain http://automaticallyclickeverythingfor.me ?

I mean really, it's just like using a normal UI while maniacally clicking as fast as possible. Every nav item you hover over gets selected. Every text field gets entered. Every button you move past gets pressed. It's like that Atari 2600 joystick with the "autofire" switch.

I went through their alternative button ideas. Two of them I "clicked" unintentionally. One of the I couldn't get to "click" at all.

All in all, they've successfully proved that this is a bad idea.

Re: Don't Click It

#35

Post by jonke »

I liked it first, using a eeepc and only thouchpad it was comfortable, then I tried some of the labs stuff and got disappointed.

I realize that there are some hardwired behaviours on how I interact. 1) I keep hitting :q or ZZ in anything that looks like a texteditor, even in emacs. 2) I keep hitting ctrl-a on every line that have a cursor. 3) wsad and boomstick on 1 and rocketlaucher on 2

I don't think that I should be the reference for how a user should interact with a specific program or site. There are some areas where you could minimize the number of clicks like we have now days more or less removed the use of dialogues and wizardzzzzz.

Mouse and clicks are good but a thouchpad interface maybe should not pretend to be a mouse.

I know that HN is leaning more or less to web user interface but there are actually still a number of usage of interfaces to computer[programs] that don't is a browser or the toplevel GUI of your OS.

I guess there is some site where those making all these kinds of new games to DS,PS?,XBOX? discuss more or less the same kind of things but from a different angle.

My kinds don't look for wsad , the look for a stylus or the stick. The don't click instead they press X or blue button.

If I have a point at all, it must be that when your used to something it is a hard to relearn but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Take what you like and make it better.

Re: Don't Click It

#36

Post by daleharvey »

jerf wrote: post #30
daleharvey wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its getting late so cant reply properly, but I dont believe the clickless interface is trying to make the user convey less information, but instead its trying to interpret information the user is already conveying in a smarter way, so they dont have to produce redundant information (the clicks). Im sure I know of one or two good uses of this in practice, but its late and they arent coming to me right now.

"I dont believe the clickless interface is trying to make the user convey less information," This is a matter of information theory. It is an objective fact that only moving a mouse provides less information than a mouse that can also click. That is also why using this inferface is slower than using a conventional interface; you have to convey the same number of bits, but you have a smaller bandwidth to do it in. It…

"In that entire paragraph, only that last sentence is opinion. The rest is a very simple application of information theory."

urm, only the first sentence is an "objective fact", the rest is your opinion and fuzzy attempts at reasoning, if you are going to patronise, please be right.

while its true that the interface is sending less information, its entirely your opinion that there is not enough information already being sent by the user to determine what exactly they want to do.

thousands of people have installed mouse gesture plugins, the xbox natal project looks to be an entirely gesture driven, the idea that this type of interface is pie in the sky "art", as opposed to a useful experiment is well, wrong.

I usually wouldnt mind discussing this more but you have pretty much put me off any further conversation.

and please note I said "worthwhile experiment", not "revolutionary"

Re: Don't Click It

#37

Post by anthonyb »

dylanmcd wrote: post #29
dylanz wrote: post #15

One day I hope I'll be able to "natively" browse the internet, graphics, videos and all... in a terminal window, or, something fully compatible with Vim/Emacs bindings.

Like vimperator? I use it, and I love it. In fact, I'm thinking about moving to a windows manager such as awesome or Xmonad for a completely mouseless experience. Vimperator - http://vimperator.mozdev.org Awesome - http://awesome.naquadah.org/ Xmonad - http://www.xmonad.org

There's also Ratpoison - http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/

Re: Don't Click It

#39

Post by apinstein »

Our company makes a virtual tour player, and we recently spent a lot of time testing UI's for ease-of-use for a one-time user. Demo: http://tourbuzz.net/2392

We tried to eliminate a lot of clicking, and it completely backfired.

Why? Because people move the mouse to "explore". Just like in real world if you're in front of a vending machine or a menu, people like to "half point" at things to help them focus and get their bearings.

The idea of an interface without clicks is horrible. People feel trapped when they can't explore by moving the mouse around without consequence.

Also, people have been trained for 25 years to click on things. Heck most people can barely stand to single-click things! At this point my mom doesn't even realize you can single-click things and she effectively double-clicks everything.

Thus, if that demo is anything other than an experiment to make the points above it's a horrible idea.

Re: Don't Click It

#40

Post by zkz »

Kejistan wrote: post #4

Interesting site, but I really cannot understand why the mouse click is a "bad" thing. Having pages do nothing unless you explicitly click is a great thing, that site showed me exactly how annoying it can be to control an interface that wants to rearrange itself all the time based on mouse movements. Moving the mouse to a link and having the link move AWAY because you happened to move across one of the links between…

There is a case when clicking is bad: in some mouseless interfaces like those based on computer vision. I once worked on one of those and had the user freely move his hand over the space to explore some icons (while having a VR headset covering his head). This interface would have been ideal for such kind of project, really.
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