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You have misunderstood. With regard to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fittss_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fittss_law (a law that tells you how likely you are

by brehaut 17y ago

You have misunderstood. With regard to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fittss_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fittss_law (a law that tells you how likely you are to successfully 'click' a control on screen based on its size and the distance to travel), the target are for the menu click is infinitely high because you can just ram your mouse vertically as it will not move past the 0th row of pxs thus always leaving you in the vertical bounds of the control, all that is left for the user to concern themselves with is x coordinate position. Additionally the 4 corners of the screen are sweet spots for controls as they have infinity x * infinity y target size.

pbz 17y ago
OK... then what do you say about having to aim for the bottom right corner in order to resize a window? Seems to me like whatever you gain from having an easy to aim menu system is negated by the difficulty of aiming the resize area. I'd argue that one resizes a window more often than access the menu (at least in my case).
- brehaut 17y ago
  Correct, it is finickity. I also probably resize my windows more than reach for the menu bar. On the other hand, putting a direct manipulation control in the corner of the screen where it would get maximum fitt's law benefits would mean it was no longer a direct manipulation control which would make it significantly more finickity to perform the actual resize once you have 'acquired' the control_and_ would take that piece of valuable screen real-estate away from more useful controls. Secondly, by attaching the menu bar to window you still have the same problem with a finickity resize control and you loose the advantage of the top anchored menu bar. Certainly window resizing in Windows is just as finickity (actually, possibly more so, windows in windows don't have to have the status bar resize thumb that is the norm in mac os x. I'm sure theres actual HCI research about windows vs mac os x resize interactions but I don't have any of it handy so wild speculation will have to do). [Strange aside regarding Chrome: the window itself doesn't have a resize thumb (only border resizing) yet the text areas do. On the other hand there is no visual feedback to indicate that you have acquired the resize thumb]
  - ahlatimer 17y ago
    One thing I wish OS X had natively is something like SizeUp [1]. It's incredibly useful, and I rarely use the corner to resize windows. Windows are often finicky to resize, and it's much easier for me to just hit a quick key combination to resize them. When I want something that isn't built in, SizeUp generally gets me close to where I want to be, and it's just a matter of moving a window straight along the x or y axis. [1]: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

by brehaut 17y ago

pbz 17y ago

OK... then what do you say about having to aim for the bottom right corner in order to resize a window? Seems to me like whatever you gain from having an easy to aim menu system is negated by the difficulty of aiming the resize area. I'd argue that one resizes a window more often than access the menu (at least in my case).

brehaut 17y ago
Correct, it is finickity. I also probably resize my windows more than reach for the menu bar. On the other hand, putting a direct manipulation control in the corner of the screen where it would get maximum fitt's law benefits would mean it was no longer a direct manipulation control which would make it significantly more finickity to perform the actual resize once you have 'acquired' the control_and_ would take that piece of valuable screen real-estate away from more useful controls. Secondly, by attaching the menu bar to window you still have the same problem with a finickity resize control and you loose the advantage of the top anchored menu bar. Certainly window resizing in Windows is just as finickity (actually, possibly more so, windows in windows don't have to have the status bar resize thumb that is the norm in mac os x. I'm sure theres actual HCI research about windows vs mac os x resize interactions but I don't have any of it handy so wild speculation will have to do). [Strange aside regarding Chrome: the window itself doesn't have a resize thumb (only border resizing) yet the text areas do. On the other hand there is no visual feedback to indicate that you have acquired the resize thumb]
- ahlatimer 17y ago
  One thing I wish OS X had natively is something like SizeUp [1]. It's incredibly useful, and I rarely use the corner to resize windows. Windows are often finicky to resize, and it's much easier for me to just hit a quick key combination to resize them. When I want something that isn't built in, SizeUp generally gets me close to where I want to be, and it's just a matter of moving a window straight along the x or y axis. [1]: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/