interaction

A single letter, usually shown underlined, that jumps straight to a menu or control once the access modifier is held.

What an element makes possible for the person using it, such as a surface that can be pushed, dragged, or scrolled.

A recorded everyday sound standing for an event, so a crumple means delete by resembling the act rather than by convention learned in the interface.

Dragging a selection across one chart to highlight the same records in every linked view.

The blinking marker showing where typed text will be inserted, moved by clicking, by arrow keys, or by dragging on touch.

A shortcut whose keys are held down together like a chord, in contrast to one typed as a sequence of separate presses.

A click that both focuses an inactive surface and reaches the control underneath, instead of being spent activating the window first.

A menu of actions for one specific object, opened on that object by right click, long press, or the context menu key.

A range of input near the resting position that is deliberately ignored, so tiny unintended movement produces no response at all.

Waiting until input has stopped for a set moment before reacting, so a burst of keystrokes or clicks produces one response instead of many.

A position a control settles into and resists leaving, so a continuous drag or turn lands on discrete values that can be felt rather than read.

Two clicks inside a short interval on the same spot, treated as one gesture that opens, edits, or selects a word rather than activating twice.

Two taps in quick succession on the same spot, conventionally used to zoom in on content or to zoom back out when already zoomed.

Picking up an object, moving it under continuous pointer or finger contact, and releasing it over a target that accepts it.

Scrolling a container automatically when a drag is held near its edge, so an item can be moved somewhere currently off screen.

The small distance a pointer must travel while pressed before the gesture counts as a drag, so a shaky click is not mistaken for one.

Making a new object by dragging out its extent rather than pressing Add: an event drawn across two hours, a frame drawn on a canvas, a range drawn on a chart.

The region that will accept a dragged item, usually highlighted while a compatible drag is in flight so the destination is unmistakable.

Committing an action by keeping a pointer or gaze still on a target for a set time, for input methods that have no click of their own.

A brief synthesized sound standing for an event, abstract by design, so a rising figure means success only because the interface taught you it does.

A reward hidden behind an action nobody was told about, put there to be found rather than to be used.

A swipe that begins off the screen edge and travels inward, reserved by the system for navigation such as going back or revealing a drawer.

What an interface says about the result of an act before it is taken, the half of the loop that sits ahead of the action rather than after it.

The rule that the time to hit a target grows with its distance and shrinks with its size, which is why screen edges and corners are so easy to reach.

The fastest of the drag family: contact is released while it is still moving, so the content keeps travelling and the gesture cannot be dragged back.

A focus model in which whatever the pointer is over receives keyboard input, without any click to claim it first.

A press whose depth is part of the input, letting a harder press mean something different from a light one on a pressure sensing surface.

A stray click the browser emits after a touch has already been handled, landing on whatever moved under the finger in the meantime.

A brief physical vibration or tap produced by the device to confirm an interaction, mark a boundary, or signal success and failure.

An action reachable only by an input the reader has to guess: a swipe, a long press, a two-finger tap, with nothing on screen saying it is there.

Invisible padding that extends a control's activatable area beyond its drawn bounds, so a small icon can stay small and still be easy to hit.

Working out which element sits under a pointer, which decides who receives the event when shapes overlap or transparent areas are in the way.

Requiring a press to be held for a moment before a destructive action commits, with progress shown so the wait is understood as deliberate.

A pointer resting over an element without pressing, a state that exists for mice and pens but has no true equivalent on touch.

Waiting out a short delay or watching cursor direction before acting on a hover, so a pointer merely passing through does not open anything.

Stacking far more feedback on an act than it needs, so one small input wobbles, pops and sings, and the interface feels alive under the hand.

A held key firing repeatedly after an initial delay, which is how arrow keys scroll and backspace deletes more than one character.

A shortcut typed as an ordered run of presses, where the first key opens a mode and the next chooses within it.

A key or key combination that runs a command directly, giving practised users a path that skips the menus and the pointer entirely.

Selecting by dragging a boundary around items on a canvas, freehand or as a rectangle, so whatever the outline encloses becomes the selection when the drag ends.

Closing a transient surface by clicking outside it or pressing Escape, without a dedicated close control being used.

A press held in place for a moment before release, used to reveal secondary actions, enter a rearrange mode, or open a contextual menu.

Spatial input where the eyes choose the target and a finger pinch commits the action, so selection and activation come from different body parts.

A radial menu that can be answered before it appears: waiting shows the menu, while a confident stroke in the item's direction selects it outright.

A small self-contained loop of trigger, rule, feedback, and result, such as a toggle that flips, buzzes, and settles into its new state.

A press of the scroll wheel button, conventionally used to open a link in a new tab, close a tab, or start autoscrolling.

A key held to change what another input means, so the same click or keystroke can copy instead of move, or add instead of replace.

Content that keeps moving after the finger lifts, decelerating as though it had mass, so one flick can travel a long way.

A command issued by the shape of a pointer stroke, usually with a button held, so a movement stands in for a menu choice.

Input from more than one simultaneous contact point, letting a surface distinguish two-finger scrolling, pinching, rotating and larger finger counts.

Moving or changing a value by one small fixed step with an arrow key, with a modifier switching to a larger step.

Rotating a camera around a fixed point by dragging, so the scene appears to turn while the subject stays centred.

Scrolling input that continues after a scroller has reached its limit, which platforms answer with a bounce, a glow, or a handoff to the parent.

Moving the viewport across content in any direction while keeping contact, so the content feels anchored to the finger or cursor.

Two fingers moving apart or together on a surface to scale content up or down, with the scale tracking the distance between them.

Redirecting all events for one pointer to a chosen element, so a drag keeps reaching the control it started on even when it wanders off.

Hiding the cursor and reading only its movement deltas, so input keeps flowing past the edges of the screen instead of stopping at them.

Operating a menu in one gesture: pressing the trigger opens it, dragging moves through the items while the button stays down, and releasing over an item commits it.

The look a control takes while it is actually being held down, confirming that the press was received before the action runs.

Reading how hard a pen or finger presses, plus tilt and twist, so stroke weight and behaviour vary with the shape of the contact.

A temporary mode held open by the user, such as a key kept down, so it cannot be forgotten and ends the moment the hold ends.

Choosing a contiguous run of items by marking one end and holding Shift while marking the other, selecting everything between them.

Two fingers turning around a common center to rotate the object or view beneath them, the angle tracking the fingers as they orbit.

A focus technique where only one item in a group is in the tab order and arrow keys move that position, so Tab enters and leaves the whole group once.

Keeping the reader's position fixed when content loads or resizes above it, by adjusting scroll offset so the visible text does not jump.

When an inner scroller reaches its end and the gesture continues, the scroll passes to the page behind it unless that handoff is blocked.

Freezing the page behind an open overlay so a wheel or swipe moves the overlay's own content and never the document underneath.

Dragging a playhead along a timeline to move through media by hand, previewing frames as the position changes rather than waiting for playback.

A numeric field whose label can be dragged sideways to change the value, giving a slider's feel without a slider taking up room.

The alternate pointer press, usually the right button or a two-finger tap, reserved for opening contextual actions rather than activating.

A widget where moving focus also selects, so arrowing through tabs or a listbox changes the selection immediately rather than on a second press.

The draggable grip at each end of a touch text selection, used to widen or narrow the range a finger cannot adjust precisely.

Physically shaking a device to trigger undo or redo, an accelerometer gesture Apple defines system wide for reversing a recent edit.

The visible cue that advertises an affordance, such as a grip texture, an underline, or a shadow that says this can be pressed.

A control that commits only once its thumb is dragged the length of its track, so the effort of the gesture is the guard against doing it by accident.

Alignment lines that appear only while dragging, showing which edges or centers the moving object currently lines up with.

Pulling a dragged object into exact alignment once it comes within a small distance of a grid, guide, or another object's edge.

Hovering a dragged item over a container until it opens, so a drag can travel through nested destinations without being dropped and restarted.

A hover style that stays applied on a touch device after a tap, because there is no pointer to leave and clear the state.

A quick directional drag of a finger across the screen, faster and coarser than a drag, usually without a specific on-screen target.

Buttons hidden behind a list row that a partial sideways swipe reveals, so destructive or common actions live under the item itself.

A single press and lift of one finger on a touch surface, the touch equivalent of a click, used to activate a control or select an item.

The pause a touch browser once held before dispatching a click, kept open in case a second tap arrived and turned the gesture into a zoom.

Capping how often a continuous stream of input is acted on, so a response fires at a steady rate instead of on every event.

The area of a control that answers a press, padded out around whatever is drawn so a fingertip can hit it without catching its neighbours.