onMouseDown() vs onClick()

[kevinmitch14]

Looking through behaviour of the components I notice that some use onMouseDown() while some use onClick(). For example a DropdownMenu, Select and Tabs use onMouseDown() which feels more instant in some cases.

I also saw this mentioned in https://interfaces.rauno.me/

To open immediately on press, dropdown menus should trigger on mousedown, not click

Is there a criteria that is followed for deciding when to use one or the other?

For example: I am currently using cmdk + Radix Dialog to create a combobox-type component. It basically looks and feels like a dropdown, so maybe I should trigger open/close with onMouseDown instead of the default Dialog behaviour. Interested to hear your thoughts and design choices!

[benoitgrelard]

Hey @kevinmitch14,

Note that first of all those decisions/implementation details are mostly coming from @radix-ui/primitives rather than @radix-ui/themes.

The reason we sometimes use pointer down rather than click is usually for certain usability features which exist in native counterparts and we felt were really nice to match. One example with menus and selects in particular is that you can be efficient and do everything in one action as opposed to needing 2 separate clicks:

• pointer down on the trigger
• move your pointer to whichever item you want (even scrolling select by moving over the scroll buttons)
• release pointer over the wanted item

[kevinmitch14]

Interesting, thanks a lot!