Right-click on the Web

Companies like Rentec Direct property management software are innovating the web with the latest technology to make online applications more usable.

Done properly, like in a typical windows or macintosh appliation, right click menus can make an online application far more useable and more feature rich.  It comes down to managing screen realestate.  Web browsers only have so much screen realestate to display and therefore online applications are typically limited in their feature sets by the amount of space on the screen.

Right click menus, in our use case, replace the need to display options right within the different pages of the application.  It's a rare occassion that when using property management software do you move-out a tenant, so that functionality is then built into the right-click menu because it's an infrequently used function.  Same goes for deleting properties, and other less frequently used clicks.

On top of the other benefits, a right click menu allows for less mouse movement.  It may not seem like "a lot" of work to move a mouse from one side of the screen to the other; however, when using an online application frequently, or perhaps for hours a day if you manage a lot of properties, those milliseconds saved for each click do actually make a noticeable improvement in productivity.  Every improvement in efficiency helps when an application is used frequently.  Especially for nested options that may have earlier taken 2 or 3 clicks, which can be displayed and made available right from the front page via the right click menu.

For an experienced web application designer, this functionality is easy to integrate.   It doesn't have to be done by scratch because the programming has already been done.  Tools such as the jQuery plugin called contextMenu make it very easy to add right-click functionality to any website.

Opinions?  How do AR members feel about having right-click functionality on web apps?

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Nathan is a member of Rentec Direct who provides property management software, tenant ach payment processing, and Rentec credit reports.