On Tuesday 06 December 2005 18:29, Rai, Vivek BGI UK wrote: > Hi Guys, > > I am a KDE user and was having a look at the mockups and plans for Plasma. > I was very impressed with what I saw. > > In particular, a big and revolutionary change for me would be: > "In Plasma, the desktop is not a single static sheet. One may flip between > any number of individual layouts on the desktop, and those changes will be > driven by the context of what you are currently doing. If you are working > on that new novel, you probably need and want a different set of items and > services on the desktop than you do when you are indulging in your hobby of > fly fishing lures." I have a suggestion. It is based on Fitts's Law - "The > time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the > target." Fitt's law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any > computer display are the four corners of the screen, because of their > pinning action, and yet they seem to be avoided at all costs by designers.
Fitt's law is extremely overrated and the usability benefits are generally outweighed by the clunky user interface design that results. For people unaccustomed to using a mouse then Fitt's law has some marginal benefits. However in these days where users are proficient at using mice and with modern accurate high quality mice then there is much less advantage. -- Ivor Hewitt. _______________________________________________ Appeal mailing list [email protected] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/appeal
