Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications

Selecting Objects and Issuing Commands

A common interaction problem in the Viewing and Navigation layer is the selection of data objects. In many Web applications, users are required to select a single object or a group of objects before issuing a command. For example, if users want to delete an email message, they would have to select the message, and then click the delete command. In desktop applications, this is accomplished by clicking the object and then issuing the command through a menu selection, a toolbar, or a drag-and drop-behavior. Unfortunately, the world of Web applications is void of the basic interaction mechanism of direct selection.

In place of direct selection, Web applications have to resort to different methods of indirect ...