Is a right-click equal to a long press?

Question

On desktop devices you can use the alternative mouse button (the right-click) to bring up contextual menus. As an example you can use the alternative mouse button in a word processor and get to see different options to format text, insert a numbered list or create a hyperlink.

If we continue the example; when you use the same word processing application on a touch screen device (touch screen desktop or tablet), is it considered good practice to mimic the alternative mouse button click, and bring up the same contextual menu?

Answer 1

On iPhone devices it's pretty much assumed that if you want any form of contextual commands then you're to press and hold for at least a second. I'd assume many other touch applications make use of this as well.

If it were me and you did not implement any form of right click option I'd be very disappointed (if I had to use the program frequently), no matter what button I have to press/movement made to bring it up.

Does your application want to broadcast itself for fast edits or does it want to broadcast itself for advanced edits?

Answer 2

Yes, on a lot of mobile devices if you touch and hold it's equivalent to a "Right-Click". Tested on Android (Samsung Galaxy S4) and iOS. This may vary for other devices - OS versions and behaviour may change with apps as developers can easily overwrite this functionality.