[Bf-funboard] Blender UI redesign doc

[Thorsten Wilms]

Hi!

Those vertical toolbars brought something about Fitt's Law back to my mind.

Fitts's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

Now the screen edges normaly limit the mouse-cursor movement. This results in virtualy infinite 
target size. More practical: Just push up the mouse to the top without thinking about the exact 
distance can be acomplished very fast. And this is the reason behind the Mac menubar.

So this special role target-areas on the screen edges can play should be taken into account when 
redesigning the ui.

The vertical toolbars could be placed at the left (or right) screen edge (if 
the window they belong to is next to one and blender is fully maximized).

The top and bottom screen edges are a bit more interesting, because they're larger and won't be 
affected by dual monitor setups.

Also of interest: The five single pixels which can be reached fastest are the four corner-pixels
and the pixel the mouse-cursor is currently pointing to (provided it is not one of the four).

Now it could be a idea to put special menus on any of the screen corners.

Source:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html


--
Thorsten