Changing a document name opens the file

Question

I was wondering if this was a new issue with Leopard... or just my mouse. In Tiger, if you needed to change the name of a file, or folder on the desktop... or anywhere, you could click, and it would highlight the words to change the name.
Now, if you click the first time, nothing happens, when clicking a second time, it either opens the folder, or launches the application. I don't particularly like this happening, especially when I'm just trying to change the file name.
I am using a MacAlly rfmousejr.

Answer 1

In my opinion, the behaviour in "Panther" and earlier was even better - you could click once on the file name, and shift the mouse pointer outside of the name area, and it would highlight. Unfortunately, Tiger made (more or less) two clicks necessary throughout the "Finder", probably to make the behaviour more consistent with "Column" view. Normally, I am in favour of GUI consistency, but unfortunately they settled on the worse convention, applying it to an area where the interaction is different enought that imposing consistency actually made things worse.
In Leopard, the issue doesn't appear entirely to be one of timing. Although it may be awkward, try selecting the icon first, then clicking the file name (I just tested this with the "double-click" setting set to the slowest). This almost never results in the file opening, whereas clicking twice (with the same delay between clicks) on the name did. Similarly, if the icon is selected by alternative means (marqueé selection, by typing the first few letters of the name, or using arrow keys), then clicking once on the item's name also activates the text field.