* Chris Devers <cdev...@pobox.com> [2011-01-03 16:35]: > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Aaron J. Grier <agr...@poofygoof.com> wrote: > > apple, why can't you move the menu bar inside the > > application's window? > > Because Fitts's law hasn't been repealed yet? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law > > With a mouse cursor, targets at the edges & corners of the > screen are easier to hit.
How do you still get from the first statement to the second? Fitts's Law stands -- undisputed. But the conventional wisdom about the edges and corners of the screen has been eaten by progress and Fitts's very Law itself. The important term in Fitts's Law is distance/size. When multi- screen setups and 30" screens are common and travelling to the screen edges requires lifting the mouse at least once (if not several times), then even a target as large as the edge is harder to acquire than a small target much closer by. Then again, many Windows users maximise all their windows even on 30" displays -- the throng of reasons that pushes them to this behaviour is independent of screen size --, which utterly defeats the point of having such a huge screen and yields the worst of all worlds in terms of Fitts's Law. Of course the one place that is *always* easy to hit is under the pointer, wherever it already is -- by bringing up a context menu. The trade-off? Discoverability for casual users. Oh the interlocking complexities of HCI design... Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
