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Click and Hold vs. Option-Click for Instant Details Popover


Scott Knapp

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I'm wondering if it really makes sense to keep both methods of bringing up the ID popover. While I'm not a big fan of the Option-click gesture, at least it doesn't interfere with other text interactions. For me, the click and hold seems to interfere with my ability to click and drag select text. If I wait too long to begin dragging I get the ID popover to display which I didn't want. And if I click and hold in the space between words and try to drag select I get nothing, no ID popover, and no text selection.

 

What do others think?

 

Scott.

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I think I have to agree with you, Scott. It's not terribly confusing to Opt-click, but it is pretty frustrating when a click-drag doesn't work. I would say keep it simple and go with one way to bring up the ID popover and my vote goes to the Opt-click.

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I've never had this problem myself and I quite like the Click and Hold option. That said I would love for it to just be a single click without the hold but I may be in a minority here. :)

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I've never had this problem myself and I quite like the Click and Hold option. That said I would love for it to just be a single click without the hold but I may be in a minority here. :)

Click and hold in the whitespace between two words. Wait a bit and then try to drag select some text. No text gets selected. Then try the same action in Pages, Safari, TextEdit, etc.

 

Scott.

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Hey - I agree with Scott C. I prefer using one hand to two for the popover. Maybe both methods ought to be retained?

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I've never had this problem myself and I quite like the Click and Hold option. That said I would love for it to just be a single click without the hold but I may be in a minority here. :)

 

I was previously in favor of click/tap, but it seems that with the items pointed out here, it would only make matters worse.

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Click and hold in the whitespace between two words. Wait a bit and then try to drag select some text. No text gets selected. Then try the same action in Pages, Safari, TextEdit, etc.

 

Scott.

 

I can see this being a problem but the delay is long enough that it's just never happened for me naturally. Perhaps the click region should be adjusted so that it doesn't extend so far away from the text itself.

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I agree that the opt-click is preferred over the click and hold. For heavy interaction with a text (i.e., academic researching and quoting the source often), the click hold interference can become a nuisance.

 

 

On the flip side, I wouldn't be opposed to a three finger triple tap on the magic trackpad (much like the Dictionary.app works on OS 10.7 and above).

Edited by James Tucker
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Yes! That's what we need! More multi-touch gestures to control Accordance!

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Yes! That's what we need! More multi-touch gestures to control Accordance!

As long as multi-touch isn't required! One of the nice things about working on a Mac is that it lasts! My 2006 MBP doesn't do multi-touch! (I did note a possible hint of sarcasm behind Dr J's comment, though) :)

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I think this might be a nice compromise: If there was an option to toggle one or the other in preferences. Something like "Instant Details popover: ([ ] Click and hold | [x] Option-Click). Where the toggles are two checkboxes so that one can have either/or or both.

 

I find click and hold on a trackpad doesn't work smoothly for me for when I want to select text, however with a mouse I have no issue. I would just default to Option-click, personally, and leave click and hold off.

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I think this might be a nice compromise: If there was an option to toggle one or the other in preferences. Something like "Instant Details popover: ([ ] Click and hold | [x] Option-Click). Where the toggles are two checkboxes so that one can have either/or or both.

 

I find click and hold on a trackpad doesn't work smoothly for me for when I want to select text, however with a mouse I have no issue. I would just default to Option-click, personally, and leave click and hold off.

 

I vote for taking this one step further: have a preference where the user can select using an ID popover and/or the classic ID palette (in other words, one or both). Further, I would like a preference to activate the popover by simply hovering the cursor over a link (but with a user configurable delay), that could be modified with a Command-hover to activate a user tool. The fewer clicks and key combos, the better!

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I came over from BibleWorks about a year ago, and I still miss a feature that I suspect many of you would consider an annoyance in Accordance. In BW, a popover appears by default whenever you mouseover any word in a morphologically tagged text.

 

I have never been extremely pleased with the instant details palette, so was very happy to see the new popovers in Accordance 10. However, I would like to propose a compromise between BW's ever-present popover and Acc10's option-click/click-and-hold: my suggestion is option-mouseover. Perhaps option-click could still function as-is for times when you need the popover to stay put, but I also find that there are many times when I want to see the parsing info for several words in a text in quick succession. Option-mouseover would let me just hold the option key and move my mouse to see the info for whatever words I choose. The same would be useful, in my opinion, for footnotes and other instant details information.

 

Yes, I can accomplish this by looking at the instant details window, but looking back and forth from the text to the bottom of the screen is not nearly as convenient as having the information at the tip of your cursor. For those of you who will inevitably dislike this idea for one reason or another, there could be a simple toggle in the preferences to disable the option-hover popover.

 

Would this idea cause any interference with any other Accordance functions?

 

With regard to the present discussion, I vote for retaining option-click (in addition to option-hover) and doing away with click-and-hold. I wouldn't really care, except that today I have been doing some highlighting, and it is indeed very difficult to select a single Hebrew letter quickly enough to avoid having the popover insert itself into my workflow.

 

EDIT: Well, I obviously didn't read the previous post until after writing this. Great idea Phil!

 

Russell Taylor

Department of Biblical Studies

Trinity Western University

Edited by rdtaylorjr
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