Why isn't “right click” more used in web applications?

Question

More and more applications are moving to the cloud: Google Docs for productivity apps, Meebo for instant messaging, Gmail for e-mails, Salesforce for CRM, etc.

Yet, I've noticed that, unlike their desktop counterparts, very few of those web apps leverage the mouse's "right click". Most of the time, when right clicking in a web app, I get the standard browser right click menu.

I don't believe it has to do with technical implementation since modifying the right click menu is quite trivial in Javascript.

Is there an actual reason that I am missing?

EDIT: The most popular reason seems to be that it's not what user expect. Another mentioned reason was that some users disable Javascript - which is a valid answer -, but in our case, we can discard this possibility since we're talking about applications that require Javascript regardless of the right click option.

Now, let me expand my question a bit:

• Do you think it should stay that way (do you really find the default browser right click menu useful) ?
• Would you like to see more application-specific right click menus where they could improve the user interface ?

Answer 1

Most users expect the right-click menu to bring up the browser context menu, so doing it to bring up an app-specific menu is not something they would try.

Answer 2

Mac don't have a "right mouse button", likewise with a lot of touch screen phones etc.

Even on a windows application most normal users (not programmers or power users) don’t think to right clicking when they wish to do something, if they have not learned it off by heart to do the given task they wish to do.

(Also right clicking on most web pages brings up a menu that a normal user does not understand, so they don’t try it more then once.)

So you always have to provide another way of doing the operation anyway.

Answer 3

I believe a very valid approach to web applications is to still keep all the browser features enabled, such as back button, opening things in new tabs, bookmarking, changing font-sizes, and so on.

The browser's right-click context menu is something that I do not want to have taken away by an app.

Now, when you start moving the web app out of the browser into its own window (turning it into a dedicated application, such as Fluid does, and I believe Chrome OS will), without URL bar and back button, then we can talk about the context-menu.

Answer 4

It is not how people are used to work in their browser, you shouldn't change default behavior. Users aren't expecting something to happen when they rightclick.

Answer 5

Just for completeness: Opera has no oncontextmenu and no simple possibility to suppress the context menu on right click.

Answer 6

Giving javascript control over right-clicks gives you something like this: http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/24.html. I really love this website, but its attempts to keep me from copying text or images (whatever it's trying to do) seriously interfere with my web usage patterns. I always open things in other tabs. I always the right click menu to access the "back" command.

It also irritates me to no end when some web site has a flash animation somewhere that steals my control key (so I can no longer Ctrl+Tab to flip to another tab.

My bottom line: web applications can't supersede the local computer's built in commands. If a web application starts taking over control keys, right clicks, etc., it has crossed the line between local and remote applications. That is a very important line to keep crystal clear.

Answer 7

As others have stated, this is due to history and what users are used to. But I guess this will be changing eventually, as web applications gain more and more importance; currently web apps are "web pages" in a "web browser" app, which is quite weird, when you think about it. It's not the web browser that's the interesting thing any more, it's the web app. Why should it run inside something called a "browser"? At least it shouldn't be that prominent to the user, even if it may make sense technically.

Actually we're seeing this with Google Chrome. It's definitely way more minimalistic than anything that came before. It's almost a "plain window to the Web".

Answer 8

Right click is an expert shortcut both in desktop apps and in the browser. Expert love it, while non-experts ignore it or use it only by rote for specific situations without really understanding it (they probably only use it at all because some expert user told them to). That’s okay. There's nothing wrong with providing something for experts only, either for a thick client or a web app. So, of course, web apps would be better if they included application-specific right click menus. They would also be better if they included accelerator keys for their commands, mnemonics for their pulldown menus, double-click for default actions, and drag and drop for selection, copying, and moving, while we’re on the subject of supporting experts.

Let’s be honest: The reason we don’t do these things for experts is because we don’t want to be bothered with the extra work, not out of some concern about confusing users with the unexpected. And that’s a valid point: a typical web app is used less than a desktop app. “Expert” web app users are thus rarer –few use the web app enough to discover and use the expert features. So why devote resources to something to benefit so few users?

Nonetheless, I want to encourage designers to have application-specific right click menus in their web apps. It is necessary if you want your app to be as usable as a desktop equivalent. If you do have application-specific right click menus, follow these rules:

• All right-click menu commands should be available through a separate means, such as a sidebar menu. With right-click being an expert shortcut, you need to provide non-experts access to the same functionality in a way they’re used to. This rule is a standard (e.g., MS Windows), despite the fact that browsers (e.g., MS Internet Explorer) blatantly violate it. This rule also addresses the concern of users who disable Javascript.

• Do not remove browser right-click commands that are still relevant. The user should still be able do things like save images on a page, copy a block of text, and open a link in a new tab. In fact, you should try to preserve the order of the browser commands as much as sensible. In general, follow the standards for menu item organization and order. This addresses the concern of the right-click menu being unexpected: As long as the same commands are there in pretty much the same order, it’s no cost to the user who is used to right-clicking for the browser commands.

• Use right-click menus consistently. Everything that can have application-specific commands should have those commands available by right-click. If users have to start guessing what does and doesn’t have a right-click menu, they’re just going to give up on it. On the other hand, if they discover it for one item, it’ll encourage them to try it elsewhere, and you want to reward that.

• Encourage right-clicking by showing it used for application specific commands in your advertisements, demos, and documentation. You may also want to explicitly show drop-down arrows on your pages (maybe just on mouse-over) wherever app-specific right-click is available. Some expert users will discover your application-specific commands anyway because they right-click for browser commands, but in many situations, the browser right-click commands are so unhelpful even experts don’t right click, so you may have to “push” it a bit.

Answer 9

It's not what users expect.

It's also not particularly "discoverable": like old-school Flash web sites where you had to roll your mouse over a graphic to get the site to do something, right-clicking is not necessarily intuitive.

Answer 10

You shouldn't fiddle with the right click because of a a little thing we call Best Practices! Don't take away my rights as a user to control my experience! I want my right click to do what right clicks do!

The best practice is to make this sort of thing optional to the user. If you want to modify this behavior, make it something users can control in their profile or in the application settings.

For example:

(click to enable)
[ ] Use super special awesome right-click menu 

Answer 11

Also, because some people may not have a two-button mouse (I'm looking at you, Apple users).

Answer 12

It is due to a inconsistency between the concept of browsing (which is browser centric) and the use of a web-application (which is application centric, the browser being only the renderer). The right click button would make sense in the second case, but as the web is made for browsing resources, this introduces an ambiguity it will probably never be solved.

Kind of interesting, the fact that the most touted deficiency in macs is the single button mouse, and then the most used interface in the world, the web, is single-button centric.

Answer 13

Personally, the only time I would do it is if I wrote an app which ran inside a plug-in which emulated some sort of editor. Silverlight has this ability now, but I would use it sparingly.

Answer 14

As i read in your forst anwser this is true it would be in the context menu it might mess with some things but as i have madde a btoolbar thta floats for my site to do anything you can use keyboard shortcuts so i see a mild and doom future for right click at all i see toolbars everywhree on websites today

Answer 15

I see two reasons. First of all, people might have javascript turned off, today that might not be the biggest issue of all but it's been following developers since the dawn of web-dev. Which brings us to the second reason, it's not what the users expect.

If you were to talk to someone about usability on the web and you had "hidden" features which were only made visible on right-click(browser context menu popup), this would probably be counted as bad design just because most users aren't use to the idea that the web is evolving into something more than just links and left-clicks(navigation clicking).