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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Fwd: [Bug 59940] New: Adoption of dotNET
From:       Keunwoo Lee <klee () cs ! washington ! edu>
Date:       2003-06-26 16:41:35
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On 26 Jun 2003, David Legg wrote:

> End of thread.

OK, but just one more thing (hey, I'm a glutton for punishment)---

> <snip>
> > Currently, AFAIK, KStep is the only window deco that obeys the last
> > two sub-bullets of the Fitts's Law requirement, but it's unsuitable
> > for other reasons (the deco icons are weird, and it has only 1-pixel
> > resize handles on the left and right window borders, which I like
> > personally but which are not what people are used to).
> > Note that the Fitts's Law requirement implies that no window deco with
> > curved corners is suitable, unless it captures clicks in the invisible
> > area between the curve and the corner.
> <snip>
> > All the "easily reversible" window decorations/actions should probably
> > do this, except for the Close button which should *not* do this.
> > Mis-clicks on most windows decos is acceptable because you can easily
> > reverse what you did, except the case of the Close button.
> 
> Usability is _extremely_ important, but if you start analysing too much
> you can get way too far up your own backside and overlook the work that
> really matters, as some of the discussions on the Gnome mailing list,
> and 'features' that have made their way into Gnome, have proved. The
> above illustrates my point. Let's not go there.

I know you probably were talking about the presentation of those emails,
not the content.  However: Fitts's Law is not an opinion, nor is it the
product of overanalyzing.  It's a very simple, objectively quantifiable
user interface principle:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/

Fitts's equation does not yield accurate results for 2-dimensional
movements, but the principle that larger targets are easier to hit remains
the same.  It's even been incorporated into the KDE UI guidelines:

http://developer.kde.org/documentation/design/ui/fittslaw.html

The facts that the Keramik window deco

  + does not fully exploit screen edges and corners 
  + has relatively small window action buttons

are, objectively speaking, usability flaws.  Or, at least, engineering
tradeoffs made in the name of some other goal---visual distinctiveness?  
Whatever.  You can make up your own mind.

However, these particular flaws seem fixable without tossing the Keramik
deco entirely.

~k

-- 
GPG public key id: 0x5CFD1761 (available on a key server near you)




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