Why isn't “right click” more used in web applications?

Question

More and more applications are moving to the cloud: Google Docs for productivity apps, Meebo for instant messaging, Gmail for e-mails, Salesforce for CRM, etc.

Yet, I\'

Answer 1

Right click is an expert shortcut both in desktop apps and in the browser. Expert love it, while non-experts ignore it or use it only by rote for specific situations without really understanding it (they probably only use it at all because some expert user told them to). That’s okay. There's nothing wrong with providing something for experts only, either for a thick client or a web app. So, of course, web apps would be better if they included application-specific right click menus. They would also be better if they included accelerator keys for their commands, mnemonics for their pulldown menus, double-click for default actions, and drag and drop for selection, copying, and moving, while we’re on the subject of supporting experts.

Let’s be honest: The reason we don’t do these things for experts is because we don’t want to be bothered with the extra work, not out of some concern about confusing users with the unexpected. And that’s a valid point: a typical web app is used less than a desktop app. “Expert” web app users are thus rarer –few use the web app enough to discover and use the expert features. So why devote resources to something to benefit so few users?

Nonetheless, I want to encourage designers to have application-specific right click menus in their web apps. It is necessary if you want your app to be as usable as a desktop equivalent. If you do have application-specific right click menus, follow these rules:

• All right-click menu commands should be available through a separate means, such as a sidebar menu. With right-click being an expert shortcut, you need to provide non-experts access to the same functionality in a way they’re used to. This rule is a standard (e.g., MS Windows), despite the fact that browsers (e.g., MS Internet Explorer) blatantly violate it. This rule also addresses the concern of users who disable Javascript.

• Do not remove browser right-click commands that are still relevant. The user should still be able do things like save images on a page, copy a block of text, and open a link in a new tab. In fact, you should try to preserve the order of the browser commands as much as sensible. In general, follow the standards for menu item organization and order. This addresses the concern of the right-click menu being unexpected: As long as the same commands are there in pretty much the same order, it’s no cost to the user who is used to right-clicking for the browser commands.

• Use right-click menus consistently. Everything that can have application-specific commands should have those commands available by right-click. If users have to start guessing what does and doesn’t have a right-click menu, they’re just going to give up on it. On the other hand, if they discover it for one item, it’ll encourage them to try it elsewhere, and you want to reward that.

• Encourage right-clicking by showing it used for application specific commands in your advertisements, demos, and documentation. You may also want to explicitly show drop-down arrows on your pages (maybe just on mouse-over) wherever app-specific right-click is available. Some expert users will discover your application-specific commands anyway because they right-click for browser commands, but in many situations, the browser right-click commands are so unhelpful even experts don’t right click, so you may have to “push” it a bit.

Answer 2

Personally, the only time I would do it is if I wrote an app which ran inside a plug-in which emulated some sort of editor. Silverlight has this ability now, but I would use it sparingly.

Answer 3

As others have stated, this is due to history and what users are used to. But I guess this will be changing eventually, as web applications gain more and more importance; currently web apps are "web pages" in a "web browser" app, which is quite weird, when you think about it. It's not the web browser that's the interesting thing any more, it's the web app. Why should it run inside something called a "browser"? At least it shouldn't be that prominent to the user, even if it may make sense technically.

Actually we're seeing this with Google Chrome. It's definitely way more minimalistic than anything that came before. It's almost a "plain window to the Web".