Triple Click selection

[wideEyedPupil]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

None of the Office applications seem to conform with the triple-click text selection method which has been documented (and a convention for any serious application) for over a decade on Mac OS's.

Is there some remotely located preference I can enable this functionality (which should be standard use in my mind)?

FYI convention is:
double-click selects Word under cursor triple-click selects the Line of text (single line only)
quaddrupal-click selects Para
quintuple-click selects All

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

None of the Office applications seem to conform with the triple-click text
selection method which has been documented (and a convention for any serious
application) for over a decade on Mac OS's.

Is there some remotely located preference I can enable this functionality
(which should be standard use in my mind)?

FYI convention is:
double-click selects Word under cursor triple-click selects the Line of text
(single line only)
quaddrupal-click selects Para
quintuple-click selects All

Where is this "convention" documented. I could find nothing in Apple help or
WORD help. And, with Entourage, triple click does indeed select the entire
sentence. What are you finding, and what is the specific problem you are
reporting?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

FYI convention is:
double-click selects Word under cursor triple-click selects the Line of text
(single line only)
quaddrupal-click selects Para
quintuple-click selects All

Don't know what "convention" you're citing. Since it's documented, I'd
love to see it, since none of the applications I've ever built have
conformed.

This specification, however, is from Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
for OS X/Aqua:

Some applications support triple-clicking. For example, in a
word processor, the first click sets the insertion point, the
second click selects the whole word, and the third click selects
the whole sentence or paragraph. Supporting more than three
clicks is inadvisable.

- Source: http://tinyurl.com/d4t76w

So it seems Word exactly conforms to the HIG convention in that respect,
though it certainly differs in others.

 

[wideEyedPupil]

yes J.E. and Bob, my bad.

This is happening to me in Excel and I thought I remebered it happening in Word but when I checked straight after posting it works a-ok in Word. Not working in Excel for reasons best known to MS.

It was the Human Interface Guidelines I was refering to as documentation. The "convention" is one understood by someone who has used DTP apps from MacWrite to InDesign

 

[JE McGimpsey]

yes J.E. and Bob, my bad.

This is happening to me in Excel and I thought I remebered it happening in
Word but when I checked straight after posting it works a-ok in Word. Not
working in Excel for reasons best known to MS.

It was the Human Interface Guidelines I was refering to as documentation. The
"convention" is one understood by someone who has used DTP apps from MacWrite
to InDesign

Even XL conforms to the HIG - double clicking selects a word. Responding
to a triple-click is completely optional.

XL really doesn't understand sentences or paragraphs, only text strings
that are subsequently parsed by the input engine.

A linefeed simply affects the display. For instance, inserting a
linefeed (CMD-OPT-RETURN) between the "+" and "C" in

=A1+B1+C1

visually changes how the formula is displayed in the formula bar, but
doesn't affect how XL parses and tokenizes the formula at all.

 

[jayratch]

Don't know what "convention" you're citing. Since it's documented, I'd
love to see it, since none of the applications I've ever built have
conformed.

This specification, however, is from Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
for OS X/Aqua:

Some applications support triple-clicking. For example, in a
word processor, the first click sets the insertion point, the
second click selects the whole word, and the third click selects
the whole sentence or paragraph. Supporting more than three
clicks is inadvisable.

- Source: http://tinyurl.com/d4t76w

So it seems Word exactly conforms to the HIG convention in that respect,
though it certainly differs in others.

I think I understand how you are reading the guidelines. I am having a
slightly different problem than the root of this thread: I double click to
select a word, and then I click again to drag that word. Instead, the system
is interpreting it as a triple click. I think this is an area where the
guidelines are vague in their wording, but it is my (lay) opinion that the
"triple click speed" should conform to the system preference for double
click. As it is, I am forced to basically, double click, then move the mouse
in a circle, then come back to drag. It would save me time and frustration
if I could double click (100ms between clicks) and then drag (200-400 ms
later) and have the software be intelligent enough to distinguish
double+single click from triple click. So to my eyes, you are not complying
with the HIG because I am not actually triple clicking, I am double clicking
followed by a single drag, yet the program is interpreting it as a triple
click.

There are a number of points in Office 08 where I am sure that the
Guidelines are followed to the letter, but not the spirit. One other example
is window behavior under Expose, where the selected window is not made active
without a second click. This has been dangerous with keyboard functions like
command-W and command-S, but could be seriously dangerous if I typed, for
instance, a client's social security number in the wrong window without
realizing it. It could cause me to be sued for malpactice, and for that
reason, I am hesitant to install Office on any production machines.

Honestly, though, your attitude toward your users here seems outright
flippant. We are not enemies. We are your customers, the people you keep
employed, and our feedback enables you to create and sell the next version,
and thus stay employed. If you ignore us, write us off, etc, and don't
incorporate our ideas into your next product, we simply won't buy it,
especially now that Apple is taking iWork almost seriously, and now that
Openoffice is enjoying real Mac support. I honestly get the impression that
you do not personally own a Mac, and maybe you resent that you somehow ended
up in this "lesser" group. I honestly appreciate your work- I use both the
PC and Mac versions, and for the most part, I think the Mac version way
outperforms the PC version. I just wish that it was a little more Mac-like
than it already is, and while you guys have made real progress on each
version since 98, it seems like it could be brought light years forward if
you guys just spent more time using "native" Mac apps like iWork, and then
strove to be "better, but consistent" so that a user can feel at home, but
feel like he just went from his Altima to a BMW.

Best of luck, and please keep up the quality work, I am looking forward to
what I hope happens with the next version.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Honestly, though, your attitude toward your users here seems outright
flippant. We are not enemies. We are your customers, the people you keep
employed, and our feedback enables you to create and sell the next version,
and thus stay employed.

Uh, no. Not even close.

99% of the posters, including me, are not, and have never been employed
by MS. The vast majority of answers given in these groups are by fellow
users.

I don't even particularly like MS as a company, though I have a great
deal of respect for the small group of dedicated Mac users in the MacBU.

I honestly get the impression that you do not personally own a Mac,
and maybe you resent that you somehow ended up in this "lesser"
group.

Your impressions are your own, but I've owned a Mac since 1984. I've
been developing on Macs since 1990. Before that, I developed on Amigas,
Commodore SuperPET, and a variety of flavors of Unix.

Currently I have a borrowed PC that I use to test applications, but most
of my WinOffice work is done in Parallels. Essentially *ALL* of my
Office development work is done in MacOffice04.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

At the risk of starting a real war here, my take on the following:

.... This has been dangerous with keyboard functions like
command-W and command-S, but could be seriously dangerous if I typed, for
instance, a client's social security number in the wrong window without
realizing it. It could cause me to be sued for malpactice, and for that
reason, ......

And well you should be. It seems to me that this is EXACTLY malpractice,
making an entry without verifying that it is both correct and in the correct
field, and not noticing the error.

 

[CyberTaz]

Not to take sides or even join the "real war" but simply to offer a
point of distinction: It's one thing to *expect* what we do on a computer to
be accurate, but it's a totally different matter to *assume* that it is.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac