Context menus in table

Question

This is a repost from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25520588/context-menus-in-table

I'm not quite sure if the audience is the same in here, but this seemed better place.

I've an UI design problem on html-tables. Each row should consists of some more actions and I really wouldn't like to add dropdown-menu on each row, since it adds clutter on my screen.

Right-button-actions are not really useful, since the right-menu actions should be added to all tables. All tables are not having these functions.

--------------------------
|1 | name1 | secondname1 |
|2 | name2 | secondname2 |
|3 | name3 | secondname3 |
|4 | name4 | secondname4 |
--------------------------

Example actions which will be performed for any of the rows:

1. Accept
2. Deny
3. Show all details
4. Remove

Any ideas are appreciated.

Answer 1

If you don't want anything to clutter your rows all the time with icons (like a drop down menu arrow, a hamburger menu, 3 vertical dots or similar) I think your option here is to show one of those icons when the row is clicked. You will at some point need to tell the user that the row has options, and that is really the standard way of doing that.

You can add this feature on hover but you should also use it when the row is selected to support touch screens.