fitts's law what? (rant)
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| mbaehrlxer Apr 22, 2014 12:22 PM EDT |
every time someone tries to argue that ubuntu's moving the menu to the top panel is in support of fitts's law i feel like going to the barricades. (warning, this is a rant) let me state up front that i don't mind the moving, if they had only moved the menu, it might have even been in support of fitts's law. but they didn't. here is a definition Quoting: "the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target" in other words, the more far away a target is, the larger it needs to be in order to reach it quickly, or: time = distance / size. and here is how ubuntus move violates that law: THE TARGET IS COMPLETELY INVISIBLE if i can't see the target, that means the size of the target is effectively zero! now do the math: distance / zero = infinity and that's exactly what i experience every time. it takes me for ever to reach the right menu entry, because i can't see it. every single time. i have to first activate the window, then move the mouse to the top, then wait for the menu to appear, then choose the right entry. if it hadn't for the knowledge that this would be fixed, i would have ditched unity for this problem alone! that's four actions instead of one: with the traditional model i can find the right menu entry and estimate the move i need to make before i even touch the mouse. then in one swift action i can home in on the target entry, click and go. when i get back to the office i'll have an upgraded ubuntu ready and this feature will be the first to go. greetings, eMBee. |
| gus3 Apr 22, 2014 1:16 PM EDT |
Wow. Someone should send this rant to Marissa Meyer. It perfectly sums up my gripes about the new Y!Mail interface. Well, that and highjacked keystrokes violating the "principle of least surprise." |
| notbob Apr 22, 2014 5:13 PM EDT |
The whole GUI interface is precisely what you are ranting over. I hate GUIs. Ya' gotta move yer hand from the keyboard to the mouse, find the icon, click the icon. wait for the application to start, then find and click evem more mouse targets. Whatta nightmare. So much easier to hit a couple keys already under yer hands and yer off. My last company went from HPUX on dedicated HP keyboards and dumb terminals to full blown Windows PCs. The HP database software was customized by Oracle to the tune of $4 mil over 6 mos. The result, an avg of two dozen more mouse clicks than curses based keyboard taps for the same operation. Everyone hated it. |
| mbaehrlxer Apr 23, 2014 12:24 AM EDT |
you do have a point, and that's probably why i prefer to work in a terminal.
but i do find GUIs helpful to discover things, and it's faster to move and click than to learn what keystrokes i need to do the same action. only when that action is repeated lots of times (as i imagine your database operations for example) then the keyboard becomes a must. as someone somewhere sometime said: "X Window is an application to display lots of terminals" so i can tolerate GUIs because i spend most of my time in a terminal anyways. (heck, at ome point i figured i can even tolerate working on windows for short periods of time, given that all i used was putty and firefox) but hiding the menubar under the title somehow just rubs me wrong. the odd thing is that in firefox (on gnome 2, not unity) i am hiding the menubar too, and all i see is one "Firefox" dropdown entry, revealing the menu. i don't know why i like that, but not unitys way? is it that here i still have a visual anchor, the button to aim for to reveal the menu? could it be that the unity menu would work if it had a button in the corner to reveal the menu? is this all just a perceived problem, but not a real one? greetings, eMBee. |
| tuxchick Apr 23, 2014 11:34 AM EDT |
I just like saying "Fitt's law" with spittle. |
| notbob Apr 23, 2014 12:01 PM EDT |
> only when that action is repeated lots of times....... I agree, to a point. I later became a CAD designer where a mouse is essential, as it is with most graphics based applications. Still, I switched to a one handed keyboard and utilized it and the mouse, together in unison, to speed my efforts and reduce repeated stress injury (RSI). ;) |
| mbaehrlxer Apr 24, 2014 2:39 AM EDT |
so the upgrade to ubuntu 14.4 is complete, and i check out the option to disable the menu in the panel, and what do i get? instead of hiding the menu in the top panel, instead now the menu is hiding in the windows title bar. @#$%^@$^#$&@$^&#%&*%&*(&(^(# BOOHOOOOO, it's the hiding i want to turn off!!!! for good measure, here is the bug discussion: [url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/ bug/732653]https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/ bug/732653[/url] the latest comment there speaks to my heart. and for the record, if it wasn't for this single problem, i'd really like unity. thanks to compiz it is actually very similar to the gnome2 compiz desktop i have at home. including the wobbly windows. i also very much like the launcher. and those are really the main changes as far as i can see. greetings, eMBee. |
| dinotrac Apr 24, 2014 3:46 PM EDT |
Wow. Deja vu. |
| jdixon Apr 24, 2014 5:32 PM EDT |
Wow, a dinosuar spotting. What's up, Dino? |
| dinotrac Apr 24, 2014 9:44 PM EDT |
Hey, JD. Just been busy, busy, busy. On way to becoming a nomad. We have acquired an ancient land shark of a motorhome and are getting it ready (note -- I didn't say restored or completely refurbished -- yet) to carry us from place to place in search of fun, adventure, meetups, conferences, and contracts. SOOOOOOO much fun to be had when you buy a 25 year old transportation device. But cool -- on a big old bus chassis with air springs, air brakes, air throttle, air shifter, and an airhead behind the wheel. Not sure, but I think the big Caterpillar diesel is bigger than our car. Good to see people are still fighting the good fight. Getting a little lonelier being a linux guy. I do a lot of Ruby on Rails work, and Macs are the order of the day -- for everyone else, that is. You? |
| tuxchick Apr 24, 2014 11:49 PM EDT |
omg, another wizened geezer with Coke bottle glasses driving a land yacht. Flee! |
| jdixon Apr 25, 2014 6:25 AM EDT |
> You? First, second, and third tier tech support at my work location. Pretty much the same as always. :) At the moment, the big job is trying my best to get all the old XP machines upgraded to Windows 7. That required the purchase of new software which finally came in a few weeks ago. It would have been done a couple of years ago, but no one was willing to spend the money for the software until the last minute, as always. :( |
| dinotrac Apr 25, 2014 8:06 AM EDT |
tc - And the land yacht's a geezer, too! We really were looking for something more reasonable and more recent, but... We still have our youngest daughter and 80 lb of dog, so the Xterra towing a Casita thing wasn't going to cut it. And -- gee, all of the newer rigs that we might actually afford look so --- so --- grandparenty. We have discovered, btw, just as we're ready to take our initial "test-camp" an interesting thing: Went to start 'er up last night and:nada. Not so much as a click. Started up the generator to make sure the batteries are fresh. Nada. Then I noticed the shifter: the stupid thing was in reverse. Motor won't start with shifter in reverse. You might think that's no big deal. Just put it in neutral, right? Wrong! I had dumped the air from the air system to let the old girl settle down onto her bumpers good and solid. Air shifter. No air. Transmission stuck in reverse. No motor. No go. Sigh. Fortunately, there is a workaround that I will handle this morning in the light. You crawl under that big engine compartment -- even on it's knees, there's room for an old fat man to slide under -- and move the shift linkage by hand. Awesome. That will be the time we discover the frame rails are hopelessly rusted or the motor mounts are about to go and 10.3 liters of diesel engine + who knows how many lbs of heavy duty Allison transmission will make me a thin old man. |
| dinotrac Apr 25, 2014 8:07 AM EDT |
jd - Spend money for software? What's that? |
| jdixon Apr 25, 2014 8:56 AM EDT |
> Spend money for software? What's that? Well, that's pretty much my attitude, Dino. But you know how companies are. :) |
| dinotrac Apr 25, 2014 9:35 AM EDT |
Surprisingly so.
Spend money for software.
Spend no money for people. Sigh. |
| tuxchick Apr 25, 2014 11:50 AM EDT |
I look forward to more Tales From Under the Rusty Chassis. |
| caitlyn Apr 25, 2014 7:35 PM EDT |
People still care what Ubuntu/Canonical does? Who knew? Well, OK, this is an LTS release, so more people do care. |
| mbaehrlxer Apr 26, 2014 8:40 PM EDT |
caitlyn: i only care because ubuntu happened to be installed on the machine i was given by my client when i work in their office.
so i figured i might as well give it a fair shot before i dump it for something preferable. the result is the discovery that unity is effectively compiz+launcher+hidden menues. since i am using compiz on any other machine where i can get it to run, i have to say that this made unity much better than all the complaining elsewhere lead me to believe. greetings, eMBee. |
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