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>On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Antti Kurittu wrote: > > > Instead, windows uses a stupid two-pixel margin, thus weakening the > > strength of the fixed menu bar (Actually, the windows menu bar is quite > > usable with little content, but with more that six windows open, it > > becomes quite cluttered.) > >well, i feel silly for saying this, but you know you can resize the menu >bar, right? mine is two rows, you could say - the top for start menu, >quicklaunch, that snazzy address bar (which i use more for local dirs than >internet addresses), and the taskbar. the bottom is where all the programs >end up. Yeah, I've noticed that, but I switch a lot more between the already open windows than I open new ones. Still, even though when placing an address bar on top of the open programs and windows, it does not give you access to those two pixels between the program tabs and the side of the screen. Though it does not take very long to adjust the mouse from the edge to the tab, it still takes time that would not be needed to be taken. It also makes reaching the start menu harder & slower. For example, if you sum up all the times you click the start menu, change a window via the task bar or click an icon per session and multiply it by people working on computers trying to get things done quickly and, say, by the 0.1 second delay caused by these two expensive pixels, you get a fairly big number per year. And time costs money. One stupid thing about windows is that when setting the "Open all folders in one window"-option on (which I do because the desktop and the menu bar get so cluttered otherwise) you can not open a folder into a new window, even through the right click menu (In contrary to internet explorer). This makes copying and moving files down a two-notch in the hard drive hierarchy quite hard, especially when dealing with long addressess. ( For example if you need to move a folder from from 'C:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\' to C:\documents and settings\administrator\start menu\programs\' ) If there's a trick for this one, like, say, holding the shift down and saying 'candyman' four times, I'd like to know it =) (I usually start all the programs that I use from the little icons next to the start menu or from the desktop. I use windowFX to limit the maximazing size of the windows to about 70 pixels from the left edge, which leaves all the icons visible & accessible even when working full-screen.) Actually I think the best place for the start menu would be to the pixel nearest to the mouse, which is the active pixel where the mouse is. Placing the start menu on the drop down menu you get on the right click would make things a lot easier. By the way,the idea of the force feedback mouse does not sound at all as stupid as it.. well.. sounds. Applying that with a slight touch of local gravity would work perhaps quite nicely. The tactile sensations of the user interface could prove to be a very big usability issue in the future. / Antti Kurittu | http://kohina.cjb.net
