Some cases yes, but in plenty of cases, this wouldn’t be great.
- Browsing HN, and your scroll gesture happens to start where a link is? Before you know it, you’ve navigated away.
- Long pressing to delete an app, and the app opens in the meantime? Awkward UX.
In the majority of cases, press gestures are competing with other gestures like scrolling. Waiting until you’ve released is often the first moment that it’s 100% clear which gesture you intended. If both gestures get invoked, it will probably lead to much worse problems.
I’m sure there are cases where act on press makes sense, but I don’t think it’s as dramatic as the tweet makes out.
> For example, it should be easier to cancel an app launch in VR that you miss-clicked — it is irritating that the meta button doesn’t work during the launch process.
Or just implement an uninstall apps screen in settings. The ratio of tapping to launch apps on purpose vs deleting an app is, what, infinity:1?
Yep, UX design is all about tradeoffs. So it's important to ask: What is more important to have UX polish? Uninstalling apps, something that happens rarely for most users? Or launching an app, which most users do dozens or hundreds of times every single day?
Adding a couple of taps to the uninstall workflow, whether it be a settings screen or a way to switch the app list into a select-to-manipulate mode, seems like a good enough UX for less common tasks if the percieved responsiveness of the device is improved.
He clearly points out that scrolling is a good enough reason t o break the rule.
>- Long pressing to delete an app, and the app opens in the meantime? Awkward UX.
I don't think he's envisioning a world where long press and act-on-press are valid on the same object. You'd have to abandon long press and double clicks.
Well, you don't have to abandon double clicks in probably the most common case, where click is a non-destructive action like "select" that can precede the double-click action (e.g. "open").
- Browsing HN, and your scroll gesture happens to start where a link is? Before you know it, you’ve navigated away.
- Long pressing to delete an app, and the app opens in the meantime? Awkward UX.
In the majority of cases, press gestures are competing with other gestures like scrolling. Waiting until you’ve released is often the first moment that it’s 100% clear which gesture you intended. If both gestures get invoked, it will probably lead to much worse problems.
I’m sure there are cases where act on press makes sense, but I don’t think it’s as dramatic as the tweet makes out.