On the web, right-clicking on the title of an open article has the same effect as clicking the disclosure triangle to the left of it. This may be handy for people who use that menu frequently, but I find it inconvenient since it blocks the browser’s context menu which contains all kinds of useful things like Open in New Tab/Window, Copy Link, Add to Reading List, etc.
Maybe making that menu button easier to hit, and/or always visible would suffice?
Dan, I’m glad you’re trying out NewsBlur. I’ve been your Twitter follower since I can remember being on Twitter in the aughts, and am thrilled when somebody I recognize makes the jump to NewsBlur. And I can tell you’re sympathetic to developers because you filed this under ‘idea’ and not, oh I don’t know, a ‘problem’.
The problem is that I need to make that menu more discoverable, but I haven’t figured out a solution that I liked. The idea is to teach you the first time where the menu comes from, but then you get used to it and you’re right-clicking regularly.
So tell me, what menu item are you looking for? You just want to be able to use custom services on links, right? I’m thinking that a preference might be the only answer for this, because I use right-clicking on story titles to be an extremely useful pointer when giving support and teaching people about those menus. But I don’t want to clutter the Feed view with any mystery meat.
Oh, and I took your year-ago advice (along with some noodling from another Twitter followee-gone-NewsBlur) about the single price and it seems to have been a good transition.
I would *really* like a way to add stories in NewsBlur to my Safari Reading List, and this doesn’t seem to be possible with NewsBlur intercepting the right-click on a link.
I find Apple’s Reading List faster to use than a site’s starred/saved stories: I can click/tap directly to a saved item without going via NewsBlur.
I’m always looking for “Open in new tab”, and though Command-click works, it’s nice to have a way to do it with just the mouse.
Tom, I have plans to support more services in that menu soon. As for RL, are you able to hold down shift and click the link in the story titles pane? … Nope, it turns out you can’t. But good news! Now you can. I updated both the story titles pane and Feed detail view to allow holding shift to send a link to the RL.
Wow, nice one!
It would be nice if there was an option to not have the menu on right click.
I’ve been using NewsBlur for a few weeks now and I’m still not used to having to Cmd+Click to open things, too used to Right Click -> New Tab.
The problem is that I need to make that menu more discoverable, but I haven’t figured out a solution that I liked
Just a suggestion, but aren’t almost all of those items (except for Mark As Read) also available as icons displayed to the right of the story? Perhaps the menu is not totally necessary if it duplicates actions available elsewhere.
I also often find that I want to right-click on the article title to select Open In New Tab and forget that this will trigger the menu. I think it’s easy to forget that left-click will already open the link in a new tab - the actions seem to be reversed from the usual interface in a browser, where left-click doesn’t necessarily always “open” the link (especially in rich UI webapps) but right-click generally opens a contextual menu.
Left-click opens in a focused tab; I usually am trying to open the title link in a background tab.
This is crazy, revert ASAP. There are no trade offs with breaking the browser UI. It’s like disabling the back button. It’s always wrong, end of story.
I’m not arguing that nothing needs to be done. I think overriding the contextual menu should never be done. However, most decent browsers do allow you to put your foot down on this (and a handful of other things that can be done with JavaScript to disable or alter the natural browser UX). There is usually a button beside the “Enable JavaScript” checkbox that lets you selectively disable certain things, like overriding the contextual menu. In Opera for the Mac, for instance, it is in Advanced/Content, “JavaScript Options…”, and then disable the “Allow scripts to detect context menu events”.
Personally, I can’t think of a single case where I want the web site to override the browser contextual menu, so that’s a good option for me. In fact, I turn all of those off. I never want sites changing window sizes, hiding the URL &c.
That’s my issue too.
How about an “options” or “actions” button (in plain English) in the far right side of the title that only shows when you hover over the title? If you don’t want in text, maybe an icon or those 3 dots.
I am all in favor of not cluttering the interface, but the way those options are implemented today is to hide them. The triangle only show when you hover over the title and it is really small (also hard to click when you need).
Overriding the right-click is not, IMO, the solution, because it removes basic functionalities from the right-click menu.
The new preference works great, but I don’t understand why it controls the context menu in both the left nav pane and in the reading window.
I had thought the primary issue was that folks want to bookmark or “open in a new tab” in the reading pane and using shift-right-click was a nuisance to learn.
My choice would have been normal browser right click on the reading window and special browser context menu on the left nav pane … where you want to interact with the feeds in a special way.
Now, if you turn on the normal browser right click, how, for example, do you delete a feed or change its settings? Where else are those functions? (I notice that shift-right-click does not give you the Newsblur context menu, by the way.)
Signed,
Confused
I second the motion for separate preferences, or for the preference to only apply to the reading window.
Hi Samuel,
Thanks for implementing this, and I’m sorry I didn’t respond on this thread sooner.
But yeah, as others mention above, this new pref shouldn’t disable the context menu entirely. I’m happy to get to it by left-clicking the disclosure triangles next to the article and feed titles. The right-click pref should only apply to right-clicks, not to any other means of revealing the menu.
Dan
You can click on the arrow next to the feed/folder/story title. Unfortunately I inadvertently broke it by shipping this right-click fix, but I just pushed out a fix for that little button.
Oh, cool. Seems to work for feeds but not folders or stories, though.
Yeah, I jumped the gun on the deploy. Try again right now. Just confirmed that it works.