415497 - Put the back button on the window edge to make it an easier target

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Proof of concept

Quoth Wikipedia on Fitts' Law:

"Edges (e.g. the menubar in Mac OS) and corners of the computer display (e.g. "Start" button in Windows XP) are particularly easy to acquire because the pointer remains at the screen edge regardless of how much further the mouse is moved, thus can be considered as having infinite width."

When the window is maximized, the back button is 1 or 2 pixels from a position where the cursor on the edge of the screen can target it. The back button is a very common target so I think it would help improve our goal of Flow if we put the back button on the very edge of the window, this giving it infinite width and making it an easier target.

The keyhole might make this impossible on other platforms, but we're using a native-ish interface on Linux. We did this for the scrollbar so we should do this for the back button.

Fire up the VM Roc and see if you agree with this :-)

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(see also bug 414842, for windows)

Comment 2

[Michael Ventnor]

Attachment: Patch

I actually think the best course of action here is to remove all horizontal padding on toolbars by default. You don't really notice this padding, and it makes for a much smoother experience when you know that putting the cursor against the edge of the screen will click that left-most button or menu.

Comment 3

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Comment on attachment 301371 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Can you request review from some UI person on this?

Comment 4

[Michael Ventnor]

Comment on attachment 301371 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Very minor code change, but allows easier targetting of buttons on the toolbar. This has no significant impact on the UI.

Comment 5

[Damon Sicore (:damons)]

Comment on attachment 301371 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

a1.9+=damons

Comment 6

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Checking in toolkit/themes/gnomestripe/global/toolbar.css;
/cvsroot/mozilla/toolkit/themes/gnomestripe/global/toolbar.css,v  <--  toolbar.css
new revision: 1.13; previous revision: 1.12
done
Checking in widget/src/gtk2/gtk2drawing.c;
/cvsroot/mozilla/widget/src/gtk2/gtk2drawing.c,v  <--  gtk2drawing.c
new revision: 1.76; previous revision: 1.75
done