On Feb 11, 2009, at 10:58 PM, J. Ambrose Little wrote:
There's the idea of "smart tags" where you show an affordance when an object is selected that invites people to click it and reveal contextual commands. There's the idea of local contextual commands that automatically reveal when a thing is selected somewhere near/ around the thing, and there's the idea of a reserved space in the interface for contextual commands to appear. Double-click to reveal. Press and hold to reveal. There are maybe other ideas, too, no?
Exploring alternate approaches is something I'd always advocate. You never know when you might stumble upon a better one. However, I'd be very cautious about taking actions that are currently used for other behaviors and trying to use them for contextual menus—that's only going to create confusion and a lack of predictability. And predictability is an important part of usability.
For example double clicking is used to open/launch applications. Image if that's now a contextual menu. Huh? And just showing up when someone is near an object, well, now you have things popping up all over the screen. We've tested that one—got really annoying really fast "How do I turn that off?" Press and hold is worse than right-click. It's not expected, not predictable, and takes more effort than right clicking. You actually have to hold and for how long? We've tested that one too.
What have we found that works? Visual queues and hints. As someone mouses over an object that has right-click abilities, we've used a pale yellow highlight or other visual clue to hint that they could right-click on it.
One word of caution: If you introduce right-click in one area, be prepared to introduce it globally. It becomes expected.
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