Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click
When I started installing the best desktop possible for Marie and Jean, we were still in the GNOME 2.X era. GNOME 3 solved my previous concerns. No in the way I envisioned it, but solved them anyway. No more desktop icons, no more tray icons.
But now that I'm introducing Marie and Jean to GNOME 3, I still have some concerns. And one of that main concern is the infamous double-click!
Do you remember? Jean is a very brilliant mind, even though he never used a computer during his whole life. As a reasoning scientist, he was trying to find the logic behind my teaching.
During one of our first lesson, "Using the mouse", the conversation went like this:
— How do I know if I have to click or double click?
— Well, you double-click on icon and simple click on links and buttons.
— How do I know what is a button or an icon?
— …
Since that time, I've tried many times to find a logic behind single or double clicking. There is not. You have to learn it by experience. And it is totally, utterly pointless.
I also realized that a single click was something really hard for Jean. Achieving to click on a given point without moving the mouse is really hard for older people. Then, ask them to click twice, with a completely arbitrary speed, without moving the mouse, not to quickly, not to slowly. Impossible.
Marie, on her side, was double-clicking everywhere. And, surprisingly, it works most of the time.
So, why do we have double-click in some places? Because we want to be able to select an item without "activating" it. How often does it happen? Never for Jean. Very rarely for Marie.
To summarize, we are making the most frequent action very hard to nearly impossible in order to allow a very rare action?
I tried to disable completely the double-clicking in Nautilus.
Do you know what?
It works. Even for me. I had chronic pain in my hand and disabling double-click was a relief. I explained to Marie to never double-click anymore. She's still double-clicking from time to time but everything works even better than before. Jean was eventually able to launch a file from within Nautilus.
Selection of one or multiple file with single mouse click
What about selection of files? I explained to Marie to draw a square with the mouse. And, yes, she found that absolutely intuitive. The only drawback I found so far was the inconsistency with lists, where double-clicking is still required. Marie called me one day because she tried to play a specific song in Rhythmbox. It wasn't working. I realize that she had to double-click on the song. "But you told me to never double click anymore!". Sorry Marie.
I'm myself incredibly frustrated by any system that requires double-click. Why do we still have double-click by default in GNOME3?
Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click
Picture by Dave Dugdale