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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Related: what verb are we supposed to use now, for click/touch?

A couple months ago, I was writing a balloon-tutorial system for an app with a desktop and mobile version. The desktop version had to have commands like "click this, then click that". The mobile version, "touch this, then touch that." Often, the text was otherwise identical.

But what do we write when the user could be using either, for example on Windows 8? "Clicking" a link with your finger sounds strange -- there's nothing clicking. And "touching" something with your mouse seems equally strange, almost as if it implied moving the mouse but not clicking. "Press" works for buttons, but not menu items or links. "Activate" just seems weird. And writing out "touch/click" is just unwieldy.

What to do?

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But what do we write when the user could be using either, for example on Windows 8?

Windows 8 uses "tap" everywhere, which is infuriating for desktop users, who now know on which side Microsoft's bread is really buttered.

For the Web, usability guidelines have said since forever to avoid phrases like "click here", because you have no way of knowing how your page is being viewed now or might be viewed in the future. They were blithely ignored by designers and marketroids.

Normally, when a verb is called for, I say "hit this link" or "follow this link"; for buttons and menu items I say "say". E.g., "Enter your IP address, netmask, and gateway and then say OK."

I was actually going to reply to the parent and say that Windows 8 often times tells me to "click or tap". Can you give an example of somewhere in Windows 8 where it says to only tap?

Of course, a large portion of laptop users have actually been tapping on trackpads to "click" for a long time now...

No matter what interface the user uses, they still "follow" links, and "press" buttons.

I tend to say "tap" instead of "touch" and, at a pinch, this could work for mouse users.

Saying that, most people will know what "click here" means, regardless of the input type, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

I would use "click". In fact, I do use "click" to refer to using touchscreens, all the time.

... which, incidentally, is the DOM event you can guarantee will be fired, regardless of the input device (unless you choose to `preventDefault()` before it gets a chance).

How about

Links => "follow"

[Nested] Menus => "navigate to"

Buttons => "press"

Other => "select"

How about 'press' ?

In addition to the suggestions of others, there is 'choose' which will work in some contexts (e.g. Menus)

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