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Don't Click It

9 replies on 1 page. Most recent reply: May 11, 2006 2:19 PM by Merriodoc Brandybuck

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Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Don't Click It

Posted: May 5, 2006 9:04 AM

The dontclick.it website is a demonstration of an experimental web UI. Instead of clicking, you pause the mouse. Instead of a page refresh, the UI morphs into a different state determined by what you had paused the mouse over.

What do you think the future holds for web UIs? To what degree is UI evolution limited by the need to satisfy our ingrained habits, and how free are we to experiment with new UI models. What are the real problems today, and what solutions can you imagine?

Pier Johnson

Posts: 2
Nickname: pier
Registered: May, 2006

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 5, 2006 11:35 AM

It's great, but hardly original. Essentially, don't click it is mouse gestures in action.

Maxthon browser (and others) provide support for mouse gestures.

Two major UI improving techniques for me are

1) mouse gestures in Maxthon
2) "quick search box" of Google Desktop

Michael Meridian

Posts: 1
Nickname: meridian66
Registered: May, 2006

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 6, 2006 11:25 PM

I played around with the interface and started to really like it. A perfect complement for this type of interface would be eye-tracking technology instead of a mouse. The ergonomic benefits would be immense, revolutionary in fact.

What I missed was some method to freeze the mouse tracking while I "context-switched" to some other application task.

Andreas Mross

Posts: 12
Nickname: amross
Registered: Apr, 2004

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 7, 2006 5:35 PM

I like it.

Its an ideal way to do "read only" operations (e.g. browsing, reading emails).
I'm not sure about the "experimental" ways of pressing a button; none of them really seem right. It seems to me a combination of mechanisms might be the best way to go. Actions which cannot easily be undone should stay with a mouse click. For example, I don't think it would be a good idea to be able to delete a file just via a series of mouse gestures, even with the efforts they have made to stop you from pressing a button unintentionally. Something like deleting a file requires the definite decision of a mouse click.

This reminds me a little of a mind mapping program I use called Freemind. It has a "Direct" selection method, which selects nodes merely by moving the mouse over them. The end result is that you can accomplish most tasks with a combination of mouse gestures and keystrokes. The program does allow changing the selection method to the more conventional "select on click", for those who don't like the more exotic selection style. I've read a few negative comments about it from some people when trying the program for the first time. I find it works well in most cases; it's not perfect in all cases but most of the time it works great.

Berco Beute

Posts: 72
Nickname: berco
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 8, 2006 2:23 AM

I really love it!

This whole gesture idea reminded me of a demonstration by SUN's Rob Tow (http://www.tauzero.com/Rob_Tow/) about his SUNSPOT sensors (http://www.flickr.com/photos/julianbleecker/116094457/). He 'dropped' java applications (imlets, I believe he called them) from one sensor to another by making a throwing-gesture. This simple demonstration really struck a chord with me. Gestures are a really cool way for controlling digital devices. Nintendo's new Revolution controllers are another fine example of that trend.

I get the feeling this whole gesture idea will be going some places.

Achilleas Margaritis

Posts: 674
Nickname: achilleas
Registered: Feb, 2005

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 8, 2006 3:43 AM

I found it confusing.

I do not see how the 'no-click' interface is useful, because there is an assumption behind it which is usually false in the real world.

The assumption is that transition from one UI state to the other does not introduce clickable areas that might be accidentally activated.

For example, when I am writing in a textbox, I place the mouse cursor outside of the textbox area. With this non-clickable system, I would have to pay attention not to place the mouse over a 'button' that is around the textbox...this makes UI designers' life more difficult than it ought to be, because they have to pay attention to position buttons in places where the user can not accidentally go.

Another problem is that when a button is surrounded by other buttons: how do I move to that certain button without activating the ones between the current cursor position and the target button? I will have to move around the mouse the non-desired buttons.

Merriodoc Brandybuck

Posts: 225
Nickname: brandybuck
Registered: Mar, 2003

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 10, 2006 7:47 AM

I'm with Achilleas on this one. I saw that site a while ago and there are some things that I know I would continually trip over. A whole slew of buttons next to each other is the obvious one. A more insidious one, to me, is where an application uses image areas for icon buttons and then uses the alt-text as a tool tip for the button. In the case of the non-clickable interface you couldn't do that. Scrolling over the icon would immediately activate it. If there were a couple similar icons, or it was a new application and you weren't yet familiar with all the choices this would be problematic. It would be very difficult to figure out what's what without actually trying it and in some cases (like our products 'erase data' feature) you probably wouldn't want to accidentally set that off.

I think there are certain types of applications that this would be very useful for but in the general case I would find it annoying. That may be simply because I've been trained to click. That not withstanding there are certain cases where I think this sort of behavior would be bad. Could you imagine opening up one of those phony citibank e-mails in IE and just plopping your mouse over a link accidentally?

Eric Gillespie

Posts: 13
Nickname: viking
Registered: Jun, 2005

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 10, 2006 3:42 PM

The demo that they used was in flash, and as such, was pretty slow on my machine. If they were to use flash (on the desktop, for example) it'd need to be tuned to have acceptable performance on older machines, otherwise nobody would use it. I wonder if the same thing would happen in a java-based environment - Sun's desktop, for example? I'm only guessing here.

James Watson

Posts: 2024
Nickname: watson
Registered: Sep, 2005

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 11, 2006 1:54 PM

What's wrong with clicking, again?

Merriodoc Brandybuck

Posts: 225
Nickname: brandybuck
Registered: Mar, 2003

Re: Don't Click It

Posted: May 11, 2006 2:19 PM

I don't know, but something must be. After all, the update Microsoft had to do for the Eolas patent was described in one article as "hobbling" IE. I figure if IE was hobbled it would be by security issues, not because a user has to click a control once before using it.

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