At 01:44 PM 2/06/2009, Garnier Garnier wrote:

>Hi
>
>I have a query:
>
>Which is technically accurate, Push the Browse button to activate the browser 
>on click the Browse button to activate the browser?

IMO, neither is 100% correct.  If you "click" a button (with a pointer device 
such as a mouse) it sometimes looks as though it has been "pushed".  But some 
button interfaces don't look like that. 

Also, some people use the keyboard exclusively, using Alt + the "hot" character 
to trigger the button event. 

I'd recommend reserving the verb "push" (or better, "press") to refer to 
buttons on a physical device and "click", qualified by "right", "left" or 
"middle" to refer to an event that cannot be triggered by any other means 
except physically clicking on a mouse button.  The documentation has to "work" 
for the intended audience and the physical interface.  

Footnote :: Lately, I've been distance-teaching my 88-year-old, arthritic 
mother, in another country, to use Skype on a laptop.  It's no use telling her 
to "click" or "press" anything:  she's physically incapable of gripping a 
mouse, never mind *clicking* it!  But given a track pad with a right and left 
button above it, she's born again! 

She scrolls quite comfortably (she says) around the screen with all four 
fingers of her right hand on the track pad.  In the notes I made up for her, 
I've instructed her to "move the cursor onto...whatever button or text 
box...and tap-tap on the track pad".  She does the "tap-tap" with her left hand 
and, if she misses, her double-tap usually lands as a double-click on the left 
mouse button above the track pad.  Hooray for redundancy!  Right-click is easy 
- she just slides her right hand up onto the right mouse button and *presses* 
it. ;-) 

Helen

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