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I've always used a triple-click on the ruler area in Word to access the page setup dialog and was wondering, are there any other bits of Windows or Windows applications that make use of this tricky but ultimately handy UI feature?

Edit: Something of a list on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-click

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4 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

Some text editors, web browsers and other applications select a whole paragraph of text when you do a triple-click on it.

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This applicable even in web browsers also.you can select the entire paragraph by triple clicking on any text – TuxGeek Oct 9 '09 at 11:51
Works in Firefox – ephilip Oct 9 '09 at 12:15
...and triple-click and drag with the mouse selects further paragraphs. – pelms Oct 9 '09 at 20:10
It's not just paragraphs in apps. Just about every single-line text entry widget that I've ever tried supports triple clicks to select all text in the widget. Works in in-place icon renames and everything. GNOME and KDE on Linux as well as Windows. Probably Mac too, but not sure on that. – Lee B May 2 '10 at 20:58
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up vote 3 down vote

Page setup on the ruler bar in word is only a double click! (confirmed in 2000, xp and 2007)

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Sheesh, you're right - all those wasted clicks! I think there is a bit of a delay the first time the dialog is displayed and I've obviously mixed up the need to triple-click something else with this. What a dolt. – Lunatik Oct 9 '09 at 11:26
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up vote 1 down vote

I have honestly never seen this used anywhere. This is probably as used as Scroll Lock, relegated to a few applications. Also, there is no such event when programming using the .net platform.

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Interesting about the event not even being present in the .net model, guess Microsoft aren't keen on its continued use. – Lunatik Oct 9 '09 at 11:16
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up vote 0 down vote

Isn't this interpreted by Windows as a double-click followed by a single click?

I've never heard of this and neither have seen mouse events able to manage a triple-click.

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There are a few things that actually recognize triple clicks. Auron's answer is the perfect example of a triple click action. – alex Oct 9 '09 at 11:27
@alex: OK, but it's not interpreted as a triple-click by the application, but "if the user makes a double-click and then immediately a single-click, select the paragraph". – Snark Oct 9 '09 at 11:31
Double click some text, wait a few seconds (5-10s) and click again. That will not select the whole paragraph. A triple click is a quick succession of 3 clicks as the name suggests. It's a whole different animal from a double click + another click :). – alex Oct 9 '09 at 11:53
@Snark - that's a bit... er... snarky. :) – Nathan Long Oct 9 '09 at 11:54
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@Snark - also, a double-click is the same thing: "if the user clicks, then immediately clicks again..." The term "double-click" is just shorthand for what the user needs to do. – Nathan Long Oct 9 '09 at 11:57
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