Talk:Hover and Switch

From Intelligent Designs

I'd consider this approach harmful if enabled per default (and not disablable -- is that even a word?). Many users tend to idle their mouse pointers unintentionally (me included) on surfaces which might become responsive under this approach.

For a common example: Newer Microsoft Windows versions don't show all entries in the start menu's application folder per default, but only the most recently accessed (which means "expanded" for folders located in the application folder of the start menu). If you expand that view to cover all entries and then accidentally idle on a folder that folder will also be expanded: resulting in the folder being marked as recently accessed and cluttering up the condensed view the next time you access the application folder.

While other problems may be more easily reversible (hovering on a tab to activate it means you only need to go back to the tab you had opened before) it still consumes the user's time if nothing else.

There are also accessibility concerns: unlike a keyboard, on-screen objects are not directly accessibly unless you use a touch screen interface. The mouse pointer thus needs to be moved accross several surfaces which may or may not be responsive to different kinds of input. If a user is unable to move the mouse pointer smoothly enough, unintentional idling of the mouse pointer on responsive surfaces may result in unintended consequences (an idle-activated button may perform an input operation on data that has not yet been completed by the user, for example).

Keyboard interface is still the most straight-forward approach to accessing on-screen items and if anything at all the trend should go towards obsoleting long-distance mouse movement (which is part of the idea behind mouse gestures: performing simple maneuvres rather than moving the mouse accross the screen to a specific point) rather than affirmative mouse clicks. That keyboard interfaces are widely inconsistent is a seperate issue. -- 80.135.249.107 02:22, 3 February 2006 (CET) (Ashmodai)