Post History
Click is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly mental replacement with tap when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet...
Answer
#3: Post edited
by
manassehkatz
·
2020-05-22T14:03:41Z (almost 4 years ago)
- **Click** is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly mental replacement with **tap** when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet or larger). But **click** is the term used, for better or worse, within the code that runs all these wonderful web sites. Specifically, it is the **onclick** event in all modern browsers. In other places, such as [this Windows documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/mouse-clicks), the events are "button down" and "button up" but the discussion nearly universally speaks about the "click" actions.
- **Click** is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly mental replacement with **tap** when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet or larger). But **click** is the term used, for better or worse, within the code that runs all these wonderful web sites. Specifically, it is the **onclick** event in all modern browsers. In other places, such as [this Windows documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/mouse-clicks), the events are "button down" and "button up" but the discussion nearly universally speaks about the "click" actions.
- As far as alternatives, **select** is not a great option (pun intended, of course). The reason is that "select" has not one but two very specific meanings already:
- * the HTML *select* element which contains *option* elements and is used to select one of many items - for this you can write things like "*select* a widget from the list"
- * *selecting* (aka highlighting) text on a page (e.g., "Select All") - for this you can write things like "*select* text in the box that you want to move and click *cut*"
- Using *select* in a more general sense dilutes the meaning of *select* in those two primary uses and can both confuse regular users and annoy advanced users (especially programmers).
#2: Post edited
by
manassehkatz
·
2020-05-21T02:41:02Z (almost 4 years ago)
**Click** is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly replacement with **tap** when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet or larger). But **click** is the term used, for better or worse, within the code that runs all these wonderful web sites. Specifically, it is the **onclick** event in all modern browsers. In other places, such as [this Windows documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/mouse-clicks), the events are "button down" and "button up" but the discussion nearly universally speaks about the "click" actions.
- **Click** is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly mental replacement with **tap** when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet or larger). But **click** is the term used, for better or worse, within the code that runs all these wonderful web sites. Specifically, it is the **onclick** event in all modern browsers. In other places, such as [this Windows documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/mouse-clicks), the events are "button down" and "button up" but the discussion nearly universally speaks about the "click" actions.
#1: Initial revision
by
manassehkatz
·
2020-05-21T02:40:40Z (almost 4 years ago)
**Click** is really the correct term. I know it is a made-up action description for a mouse or trackball. It requires on-the-fly replacement with **tap** when used with a touch-screen (phone, tablet or larger). But **click** is the term used, for better or worse, within the code that runs all these wonderful web sites. Specifically, it is the **onclick** event in all modern browsers. In other places, such as [this Windows documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/mouse-clicks), the events are "button down" and "button up" but the discussion nearly universally speaks about the "click" actions.