It’s a good UI design to make sure your single-clicks and double-clicks are conceptually related:
Single-Click: select icon
Double-Click: select icon and open it
Single-Click: select color
Double-Click: select color and open palette editor
Notice how in these examples the single-click action is actually a subset of the double-click. This means you can go ahead and do your single-click action normally and just do the additional action if the double-click comes in.
If your user interface does something like:
Single-Click: select icon
Double-Click: close window
Then you are setting your users up to fail. Even if they remember what single-clicking does versus double-clicking all the time, it’s very easy to accidentally move your mouse too far while double-clicking or wait too long.
Edit:
I’m sorry to hear that.
In that case, I found these two articles useful:
- Logical consequences of the way
Windows converts single-clicks into
double-clicks - Implementing
higher-order clicks