RE: How to write for both mouse and touch screen

Subject: RE: How to write for both mouse and touch screen
From: "Bowes, Rebecca" <Rebecca-Bowes -at- IDEXX -dot- com>
To: "Weissman, Jessica" <WeissmanJ -at- abacustech -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 22:19:03 +0000

Thanks, Jessica. My first instinct was to continue to use "click," but I'm afraid I may be giving the new touch-screen capability short shrift if I do that. Hence the difficulty! I'm glad to know that you think it's a viable option, though. It will be interesting to see if others think so, too.

--Rebecca

-----Original Message-----
From: Weissman, Jessica [mailto:WeissmanJ -at- abacustech -dot- com]
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2013 5:01 PM
To: Bowes, Rebecca; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: How to write for both mouse and touch screen

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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References:
How to write for both mouse and touch screen: From: Bowes, Rebecca
RE: How to write for both mouse and touch screen: From: Weissman, Jessica

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