Re: My usability experience - Asa Dotzler should be fired

On Aug 19, 12:28 am, David Tenser <[email protected]> wrote:

> > If you have difficulties aiming for the tabs, you need stronger
> > glasses or more accurate mouse or steadier hand or combination of
> > these :) Tabs on bottom works for me perfect.
>
> It isn't about bad vision or mouse accuracy, it's about the time it
> takes to stop the mouse/touchpad movement precisely over the tab strip,
> which is a small vertical area. If the tabs are at the very top of the
> screen (as is the case in Win7/Vista and Mac OS X at least), the
> movement becomes a lot quicker.

I understand how this could be a benefit with a high-inertia pointing
device such as touchpad using certain "usage-easing
settings" (synaptics driver feature, I fail to remember its name) or
why not trackpoint for that matter. However, what you're describing is
fundamentally a lack of accuracy. I have no such issues myself, being
primarily a desktop computer user (and even my notebooks have external
wireless mice to go with them). My mouse pointer lands precisely on
the pixel where I want it to land, every time, all the time ;) All I
care about is the distance traveled, and it's simple math. When
majority of navigation takes place using mouse's back/forward buttons,
you have very little need to visit the navigation toolbar, which is
right below titlebar/pull-down menus. Then come tabs, and mouse
pointer spends most of its time in actual web content window. Most
frequently accessed feature is indeed tabbar and, were it at very top,
with navbar and whatnot in between, this is just unnecessary back/
forth traffic to user of a pixel-perfect pointing device.