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Subject:RE: How to write for both mouse and touch screen From:"Weissman, Jessica" <WeissmanJ -at- abacustech -dot- com> To:"Bowes, Rebecca" <Rebecca-Bowes -at- IDEXX -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Dec 2013 17:00:37 -0500
It's a tough issue.
I'd just say "click", on the grounds that if people can manage to hit buttons on a phone and talk about it as "dialing" a number, they can tap something if told to click it.
"Select" has a slightly different meaning. When I was documenting UIs I used "select" for picking something out of all the things you could pick, and "click" for taking action on something. Our users "select"ed one of the options, then clicked OK to make it happen. Or they "selected" a category. Sometimes a selection took effect immediately; a click always did.
I'm fully aware that this is an imperfect and moderately inconsistent solution. But it worked. Users we tested our UI on had little trouble with it.
- Jessica
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