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It's interesting that we're so used to the GUI buttons having that specific behavior of only triggering when releasing, even if you exit and enter the button area while holding the mouse button down, etc.

IRL 99%+ of buttons work by just doing the thing as soon as you press them. But a button that works like that in a GUI would feel wrong.

by IdiotSavage9 hours ago|

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> But a button that works like that in a GUI would feel wrong.

No, it doesn't. It feels way more responsive.

My pet peeve is "stopwatch apps" which trigger on release instead of on press. When timing something where fractions of a second matter, most people won't realize that it triggers on release and tap down when they want to start / stop, adding some arbitrary delay until they actually release the button.

by d12bb6 hours ago|

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No, even for stopwatch, trigger on release is the correct choice, as it’s more precise.

When tapping, I have to see, or in case of watching for some event to happen to stop the time, feel/guess when exactly the distance between screen and finger approaches zero. With a stop button triggered by release however, I can just calmly rest my finger on it and raise when the event happens, without any guesswork.

by SoftTalker6 hours ago|

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How does a real stopwatch work? Hint: it starts/stops on press, not release. So that's what the app should do, to map with prior expectations.

"Nobody uses real stopwatches anymore" might be somewhat true, but in athletics training they still do, and it just shows that it's not possible to adequately reproduce a thing on a touch screen and have it be as functional as the real item. A stopwatch app on a phone will always be a poor substitute for a real stopwatch.

by hananova12 minutes ago|

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Yes, but on a real stopwatch, or on a computer mouse, you can rest your finger on the button with almost but not quite enough force to actuate it, and activate it with a press.

On a touch screen you have to hover your finger over the button and move it down some indeterminate distance to actuate the button. The equivalent to the above example for a touch screen is to activate on release, as you can rest in a state “ready to click” just like on a physical button that way.