Press & Hold - Triggering alternate button / link behavior
Traditionally web buttons have been designed to accept a single behavior from the user - Click. Click is for submit, click is for save, send, book, next, add etc. No matter where on the button you click, if you press that mouse button a second longer, if you perform a double click, reaction is always the same. Dead simple and in 99.99% instances this all there needs to be.
In some rare cases however, It would be useful to allow the user to adjust her pattern of click if she requires a different, non-typical reaction from the system, but still clicking on that same button. For example:
I'm an avid user of Nozbe.com, online todo manager / productivity platform. One thing that always irked me though, was the fact that submitting my actions puts them on the top of the list. With most todo items it's acceptable, but with some actions of low importance I'd want them to go straight to the bottom of my painstakingly ordered list. Normally for that to happen I need to add an action, it would go to the top, then drag & drop it to the bottom. If the list is long and extends below the fold, this is cumbersome.
So I figured, what if a regular click on the "add" button does what it does now, but a special click on that same button moves my new todo to the very bottom of the list.
This special click is nothing else then clicking and holding down onto the pressed button for say - over a second and releasing it, the button would respond by blinking fast 2 times as to inform you it accepted your special request and then toss my new todo on the far end of the list.
This pattern could be adopted on other web sites, preferably in those that are typical applications where users have time to acquaint themselves with the system, learn the tricks, not for online properties where users come and go. This is for low affordance of this pattern, but still, even google could adopt it for their "I'm feeling lucky" feature.
Similarly, this could be adopted for links. If you click and hold a link for 1 second it would blink, then open the target in a new tab, no need for your left hand to tap on the apple command key to do exactly the same.
Not sure if this is something new or it's already been adopted somewhere. I, at least, haven't seen it used anywhere. If you, dear readers, happen to have seen something along these lines, please drop me a line.
