unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jim Rorie <jfrorie@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 09:30 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> 
> "David Siegel" <david.siegel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >I think maximize, minimize, and close are taken for granted -- they're
> >unquestioned assumptions carried over from a dusty desktop computing past.
> >Frankly, I'm not convinced that any of these buttons are worth the price
> >paid by users in time spent thinking about how to arrange their windows.
> 


I hadn't thought about this until now, but I can't remember the last
time I've hit maximize.  Double clicking the title bar toggles the
maximized, unmax states quite conveniently and is a much bigger target.
While the close button in the corner makes a good consistent target, the
other two buttons are a little fiddly, both in size and location. 

The problem that I see it that people that are rearranging windows for a
particular purpose are typically moving the mouse cursor in long
swooping motions.  (At least in my use case)  Trying to hit a small
button tends to break that type flow.  The double clicking of the title
bar works in my flow because it doesn't slow me down and is doable in
long swooping gestures.  

Perhaps we should examine dropping the min,max buttons in favor of a
more "holistic" active windows approach?  Food for thought.

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