A Single Click Operating System

As an IT lecturer, I occasionally get a class where I have to teach beginners how to use such fundamentals as Windows, Office and the internet. As such, I'm in a good position to see where points of confusion arise for people new to computers and there are two which got me thinking.

Firstly, that the web and Windows are two different environments with different rules. It's hard to explain to the students that they don't have to double click HTML links, for example.

And secondly... When exactly do you have to double click in Windows and when do you only have to single click? I'm sure you, the reader know, and I certainly do, but how can you get it into a simple one sentence rule that a beginner can take on board? Every time I come up with one, I find a loophole. "Double click is for icons" doesn't work because you then have to define what an icon is and the loopholes just pop up there instead. It gets even worse in MacOS X with the Finder sidebar, which is single-click, and column view, which is confusingly both single and double-click.

In thinking about this, I've come to wonder why we double click at all. It's baffling and seemingly inconsistent for beginners, entirely unnecessary and has no parallel in the real world. Can you think of a button you have to press twice quickly to activate some household device?

The History

The legacy here is courtesy of Apple, the company that brought mouse control to the market with the Macintosh in 1984. It's easy to simply accept it as the Way Things Are now but it was Apple who created an entire user interface metaphor based around the desktop, complete with files, folders and a little bin down by your feet. The strength of the metaphor was so strong it's still in use today and although much has been added, the basics remain the same - the files, folders, desktop and bin are all there.

Mice were also a new concept at the time and Apple built their user interface around a single button mouse. Most people prefer a two-button mouse nowadays and it's easy to criticise Apple's choice with hindsight. However, with the mouse being so new, no one knew how well it would work and how much extra functionality could be levered on to it before it became too complex. The mouse is not alone here - joysticks used to have one button, touch screens started detecting just single touches and even keyboards have had extra keys slipped in around the edges since they were originally introduced.

With only one mouse button, there were only so many things you could do. You could move the mouse, click and drag the mouse or just click. Double clicking was a fairly ham-handed but still passably acceptable way of increasing the options available. With it, we could double click to open a file or single click to select it and then choose to do something else with it via the menus.

Microsoft then rather famously copied Apple's graphical user intreface almost verbatim for its Windows operating system and set in diamond the interface's position as the de-facto standard. They ported over the whole thing to the PC but chose to support a two button mouse rather than a one. This provided a quicker, easier way to do different tasks with files - right clicking. However, Microsoft didn't take it any further than that. It was included as a shortcut and that's all. It was something you didn't need and could, in theory, do without.

In 1994, the first mainstream single-click interface popped up in the form of the web. It worked almost exactly the same - you could still select things and then manipulate them via the menus across the top of the screen, and you could still right click on them to get the same effect, but to activate a link on a webpage only took one click, not two.

And it worked just fine. A one-click interface, although it could use perhaps some polish here and there, was not only perfectly viable but embraced. It needed only a minor tweak to the existing UI and is simpler, more consistent and easier to get to grips with. There are no exceptions here - just the same rules all the time.

Meanwhile, Apple finally added a multi-button mouse of their own - even if the right hand button was disabled by default - making the original decision to use double click entirely superfluous.

Switching to Single Click

The contradictory combination of Apple's original UI and the web's newer single-click approach has left the typical desktop experience a mish-mash of two user interfaces with incompatible rules. People get used to it, sure, but having students who are new to computers underlines to me exactly how confusing it all really is. Single and double-click is seemingly inconsistent within the operating systems and differently and more dramatically inconsistent when put along side the web - which is as integral to a computer nowadays as the operating system anyway.

The big argument against changing it is that you would risk alienating your users. However, such moves have happened before, though, such as when Apple switched from Mac OS 9 to a radically different interface of Mac OS X. A single-click OS would, I think, be no harder to get used than if you switched from Windows XP to Vista. There would be a period of adjustment, sure, but you would get used to it quickly enough. In the meantime, it would be child's play for the OS to detect and correct for accidental double-clicks. It goes without saying that an option to revert to "classic" double-click behaviour not only could be included but should.

Who Could Do It?

There are three major operating systems who could introduce a single-click user interface - Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (which basically means "Ubuntu" since that is the most popular version).

In fact, Windows already has a single click mode - or did in Windows XP, at any rate. Unfortunately, it was a tacked on afterthought which turned everything into ugly web-like links. It had no effort spent on it to make it workable but was rather just thrown in with a checkbox somewhere to turn it on and off. It certainly wasn't on by default or pitched as something new and better. Or even pitched at all.

Which is a shame because, of all of the operating systems, Windows would be best served by changing. Microsoft's flagship operating system is struggling and desperately needs a strong point of differentiation or two to set them apart and a little ahead of their competition. Re-tooling the user interface to be single-click by default and making Windows easier to learn would be something they can advertise.

But Microsoft has always been reluctant to change anything unless forced to - and then only after another company has implemented the idea, tested it and found it to be popular enough to maybe tempt Microsoft's own users away. In spite of the fact that Microsoft badly needs something like this, they are probably the least likely to implement it.

Apple, on the other hand, is well known for both enhancing a user interface and creating new ones (such as on the iPhone). Unfortunately, Apple doesn't tend to alter the fundamentals of the UI but rather add extras over the top (such as Quicklook, Exposé and the Dashboard). Even today, Apple computers are shipped with a mouse set to "one button" mode (even though it does have a left and right mouse button). Apple is also probably unlikely to change to a single click operating system.

Linux also likes to keep things safe, adding gloss and effects but not messing with the underlying basics of a mouse controlled computer. In their (to my mind, misguided) quest to appeal to users from both sides of the fence, they timidly blend the best ideas from Microsoft and Apple and rarely think of anything new. Any fundamental change would also have to run a gauntlet of open source contributors and would be unlikely to make it past them all.

All in all, the chances that any major operating system would make the change is slight. I guess my students will just have to struggle on...