See also
Look up double-click in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
A double-click is the act of pressing a computer mouse button twice quickly without moving the mouse. Double-clicking allows two different actions to be associated with the same mouse button. It was developed by Tim Mott of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. [1] [2] [3] Often, single-clicking selects (or highlights) an object (eg the space between two characters) while a double-click selects the next object up in the selection hierarchy (eg a word) [4] , or executes the function associated with that object (eg open a file folder). Following a link in a modern web browser is accomplished with only a single click, requiring the use of a second mouse button, "click and hold" delay, or modifier key to gain access to actions other than following the link. On touchscreens, the double-click is called "double-tap"; it's not used as much as double-click, but typically it functions as a zoom feature. ("triple-tap" sometimes used to zoom the whole screen.)
On most systems, double-clicking an icon in the file manager will perform a default action on the object represented by the icon. Double-clicking an application program will launch the program, and double-clicking a file icon will open the file in a default application for that file's type or format.
In many programs, double-clicking on text selects an entire word, and possibly other characters, as defined in word boundaries. [5] (In X Window, it will also copy that piece of text into a buffer separate from the system clipboard, as with all selected text. The selected text is not also put into clipboard until an overt cut or copy action takes place. A person can retrieve the information from this buffer, which is not the system clipboard, later by pressing the middle mouse button.)
New mouse users or the elderly often have difficulty with double-clicking due to a need for specific fine motor skills. They may have trouble clicking fast enough or keeping the mouse still while double-clicking.
Solutions to this may include:
Additionally, applications and operating systems will often not require the mouse to be completely still. Instead, they implement hysteresis, allowing for a small amount of movement between the two clicks.
Another complication lies in the fact that some systems associate one action with a single click, another with a double-click, and yet another with a two consecutive single clicks. Even advanced users sometimes fail to differentiate between these properly. An example is the most common way of renaming a file in Microsoft Windows. A single click highlights the file's icon and another single click (on the filename, not the icon) makes the name of the file editable. A user who tries to execute this action may inadvertently open the file (a double-click) by clicking too quickly, while a user who tries to open the file may find it being renamed by clicking too slowly. This may be avoided by Windows' users by using the menu (or F2/Enter) to initiate renaming and opening rather than multiple clicks. In GNOME, this problem is avoided entirely by simply not allowing file renaming by this method. In the classic Mac OS, which originated this technique, moving the mouse after the first click would immediately highlight the name. This was the result of a bug in the first versions of the system, one that was deliberately continued after users had come to rely upon it.
The maximum delay required for two consecutive clicks to be interpreted as a double-click is not standardized. According to Microsoft's MSDN website, the default timing in Windows is 500 ms (half a second). [6] The double-click time is also used as a basis for other timed actions.
The double-click timing delay can usually be configured by the user. For example, adjusting double-click settings can be done by:
In 2004, Microsoft was granted a patent on using a double-click on "limited resource computing devices". [7] As a result of this, some observers fear that any U.S. company which uses double-clicking may have to change their product not to use the technology, pay licensing fees to Microsoft, or give Microsoft access to intellectual property. [8]
A context menu is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choices that are available in the current state, or context, of the operating system or application to which the menu belongs. Usually the available choices are actions related to the selected object. From a technical point of view, such a context menu is a graphical control element.
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening, renaming, copying, moving, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure.
The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.
Cut, copy, and paste are essential commands of modern human–computer interaction and user interface design. They offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The cut command removes the selected data from its original position, and the copy command creates a duplicate; in both cases the selected data is kept in temporary storage called the clipboard. Clipboard data is later inserted wherever a paste command is issued. The data remains available to any application supporting the feature, thus allowing easy data transfer between applications.
In computing, an icon is a pictogram or ideogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system. The icon itself is a quickly comprehensible symbol of a software tool, function, or a data file, accessible on the system and is more like a traffic sign than a detailed illustration of the actual entity it represents. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data. The user can activate an icon using a mouse, pointer, finger, or voice commands. Their placement on the screen, also in relation to other icons, may provide further information to the user about their usage. In activating an icon, the user can move directly into and out of the identified function without knowing anything further about the location or requirements of the file or code.
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to invoke many kinds of actions, or create various types of associations between two abstract objects.
The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running programs. The taskbar and the associated Start Menu were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner at Harvard.
A graphical widget in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct manipulation to read or edit information about an application. User interface libraries such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Qt, GTK, and Cocoa, contain a collection of controls and the logic to render these.
A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction with the underlying graphical system that provides required functionality—support for graphics hardware, pointing devices, and a keyboard—and are often written and created using a widget toolkit.
In computing, a file shortcut is a handle in a user interface that allows the user to find a file or resource located in a different directory or folder from the place where the shortcut is located. Similarly, an Internet shortcut allows the user to open a page, file or resource located at a remote Internet location or Web site.
A menu bar is a graphical control element which contains drop-down menus.
Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.
The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of Windows, it also includes Flip 3D and the charms. In Windows 10, the Windows Shell Experience Host interface drives visuals like the Start Menu, Action Center, Taskbar, and Task View/Timeline. However, the Windows shell also implements a shell namespace that enables computer programs running on Windows to access the computer's resources via the hierarchy of shell objects. "Desktop" is the top object of the hierarchy; below it there are a number of files and folders stored on the disk, as well as a number of special folders whose contents are either virtual or dynamically created. Recycle Bin, Libraries, Control Panel, This PC and Network are examples of such shell objects.
Alt+Tab ↹ is the common name for a keyboard shortcut that has been in Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 (1985). This shortcut switches between application-level windows without using the mouse; hence it was named Task Switcher.
A number of computer operating systems employ security features to help prevent malicious software from gaining sufficient privileges to compromise the computer system. Operating systems lacking such features, such as DOS, Windows implementations prior to Windows NT, CP/M-80, and all Mac operating systems prior to Mac OS X, had only one category of user who was allowed to do anything. With separate execution contexts it is possible for multiple users to store private files, for multiple users to use a computer at the same time, to protect the system against malicious users, and to protect the system against malicious programs. The first multi-user secure system was Multics, which began development in the 1960s; it wasn't until UNIX, BSD, Linux, and NT in the late 80s and early 90s that multi-tasking security contexts were brought to x86 consumer machines.
A mouse button is an electric switch on a computer mouse which can be pressed (“clicked”) to select or interact with an element of a graphical user interface. Mouse buttons are most commonly implemented as miniature snap-action switches.
Some of the new features included in Windows 7 are advancements in touch, speech and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.