peter hates software: Contextual menus are on right-click, OK?

• From: peter (Peter da Silva)
  Date: 20:07 on 01 Feb 2007
  Subject: Contextual menus are on right-click, OK?
  
  Bug-report to Apple, on iCal:
  
  ``Normally on the Mac where an object on the screen has a contextual
  menu available, that is accessed by right-clicking. In iCal, to
  add an additional alarm to an event, you have to LEFT click on the
  word "alarm". Right-clicking does nothing.
  
  ``Whether that's a bug or a design flaw depends on whether that's
  deliberate or not, but I've been using this OS since it was called
  "NeXTSTep" and it didn't even occur to me to LEFT-click on a word
  that had no 3d cues to indicate that it was a button. I right
  clicked, nothing happened, and so I assumed iCal didn't support
  multiple alarms until talking about it with another Mac user after
  a meeting I was late to.''
  
  I can just hear some hateful begger at Apple saying "Well, the Human
  Interface Guidelines are only guidelines".
  
  
  

• From: Chris Nandor
  Date: 21:15 on 01 Feb 2007
  Subject: Re: Contextual menus are on right-click, OK?
  
  At 14:07 -0600 2007.02.01, Peter da Silva wrote:
  >``Normally on the Mac where an object on the screen has a contextual
  >menu available, that is accessed by right-clicking. In iCal, to
  >add an additional alarm to an event, you have to LEFT click on the
  >word "alarm". Right-clicking does nothing.
  
  Two things:
  
  First, ctrl-click works for me on the word "alarm."  Does same thing as
  left-click.
  
  Second, this is common for this type of thingy.  Whatever it is called.
  Also see Address book.
  
  But it gets better: whereas in iCal ctrl-click and left-click are the same,
  and ctrl-click and right-click (which are usually the same) are different,
  in Address Book, left-click and right-click are different (bring up two
  completely different menus), but this time, ctrl-click does the same thing
  as right-click (which is expected).
  
  Fun!
  
  
  

• From: peter (Peter da Silva)
  Date: 22:01 on 01 Feb 2007
  Subject: Re: Contextual menus are on right-click, OK?
  
  > First, ctrl-click works for me on the word "alarm."  Does same thing as
  > left-click.
  
  Which is why nobody at Apple noticed it, I'm sure, because except for a
  few leftover NeXTies I'm sure they all use control-click, so the lazy
  code in iCal that just ignores the meta-key seems to work for them.
  
  Eating your own dogfood doesn't help when you're selling to cats.
  
  
  

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