There’s this site called DontClick.it — basically it’s a Flash-powered user-interface approach that avoids the necessity of clicking for navigation and other functionality. The web site claims that there is a small gap of time between clicking that can be eliminated by omitting the clicking process altogether. While this may be the case, I don’t think that the omission of clicking would be beneficial to many users who are often uncertain whether they want to select a particular item (be it a link, input field, or something else). However, for advanced users of the Web, clicking may actually be a hindrance to productivity — I can’t confirm this, though, because I’m much more experienced with clicking than with hovering. In order to decide which is truly more efficient, I have to evaluate which is better after I’ve acquired a good deal of experience with them both. This means I’ll have to have some way to evaluate both of them; clicking I’m already experienced in — I do this every day, all the time — but how do I avoid clicking on every site I visit?
Introducing Don’t Click It!, a Greasemonkey script for Firefox power-users. Install this little bugger and your clicking is over, unless you decide that you’re more productive with clicking (but like I said, you should evaluate the usefulness of a click-free interface objectively rather than assume it’s too difficult because you’re “not used to it”). I’d look into giving it a try — there are some things that may not work (e.g., file inputs that can’t be accessed by JavaScript and I noticed a problem with a Yahoo! Mail drop down menu), but it’s a good start, anyway. Enjoy, and don’t forget to tell me what you think or suggest improvements! There’s always room for that!
Update: it seems that I have troubles controlling my mouse (especially when I’m using my laptop’s mousepad), so perhaps clicking would be better just if everything (including very small links) were easier to click. Hmm, I feel yet another Greasemonkey script coming on…
Update 2: something really cool that I noticed earlier was that I could be talking on instant messaging (on a seperate monitor on the same computer) and browsing the Internet at the same time because the instant messaging window would stay focused, but I could still browse the Internet at the same time. Pretty cool, huh? The 19th (or 20th) I should be releasing a much better version of this Greasemonkey script, so hang tight for that!
Update 3: I’ve updated the script. What do you think of the updates?
Update 4: More updates…
That site’s neat, but I’ll hold off on removing clicking for myself.
June 17th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Sounds like an Apple-sponsored conspiracy. Their next mouse - NO BUTTONS!
June 17th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Suit yourselves. So far, it’s been a slight nuisance due to the fact that I click the wrong links, but aside from that the experience has been great — I’ve never searched Google so quickly.
June 17th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Okay, well, I had to go to another computer to try dontclick.it Besides it being down yesterday, it requires 1024×768 or higher. Now while not clicking works for that site, Jona, I’m not too fond of your script. An idea like this, at least in this raw form, wouldn’t catch on outside of advanced users. Merely quickly going by a link sends me to a page. I scroll with the scrollwheel all the time, so if a link goes by BAM I leave. I’ve got to be very careful not to go over any links. A site like Amazon.com, it’s fooking impossible to do anything. If this idea were really to catch on, it needs some fine tuning.
June 18th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Hi,
Cool, nice add-on, but I am having trouble blocking sites from “no-clicking” even though I have blocked them in the menu.
-Tanner
June 18th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
I think a time-delay of some sort (or a “disable no-clicking functionality while holding a specific key”) will help solve your problem, Bob, and make using the script easier. I’m going to have to work on the Greasemonkey script some more later, hopefully very soon.
Tanner, if the script is executing on a site you’ve put on the “exclude” list, it may be a problem with Greasemonkey itself, rather than my script. I wish I could give you a link to some sort of explanation as to why this is the problem, but I’m not extremely familiar with Greasemonkey at this time (highly due to the fact that their Mozdev page really sucks — they need to get a .com for goodness sake!). You can try asking your question on the mailing list (see greasemonkey.mozdev.org), though.
June 18th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
About the window focus. I just discovered the same thing only the other way around.
If you drag a link from a page to the im window enter still opens the link in the browser.
I think on-release would be cool for the cluttered sites. So that holding the button doesn’t do anything. Or lifting the mouse from the table? on-lift?
did you just lift your mouse? hehehe
July 16th, 2005 at 5:32 pm