unity-design team mailing list archive

[Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>]

I would add that my first annoyance with this behavior is that I often use the mouse pointer to "point out" something in a screenshot. Now I must stay physically active to do so rather than just setting the screenshot delay time properly, positioning the pointer, and waiting.

It just seems like more work to me :^)

What exactly are the benefits?

--- On Thu, 7/1/10, David Callé <davidc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: David Callé <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Ayatana] Some thoughts about unclutter
To: "ayatana" <ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, July 1, 2010, 5:26 PM

As a non native english speaker, this mail won't be long. I will just
share some assertions that I believe being true for a vast majority of
users.

1) When I see my mouse cursor on my desktop, it means my computer is
ready for action.

2) When the mouse cursor is acting strange (like disappearing or slowly
moving), it means that there is something wrong with my computer.

3) My mouse cursor is my virtual hand. When I don't use my real hands, I
move them away and I wouldn't want them to "disappear" whenever I don't
use them.

4) Interacting with my computer include relying on several states of my
mouse cursor (busy, active, ready to grab or to interact). Make it
disappear and I have lost an indicator of an essential state of my
computer : its ability or not, to do things.

5) When I don't see my cursor before moving it, it's like not seeing my
taskbar and having to alt-tab.

And the last two, maybe the most important ones : 

6) When I see my mouse cursor, I instinctively know the amount of
movement my hand or finger will need to take it to another place of the
screen.

7) It's easier to define the future trajectory of an immobile object,
than having to catch a moving object with my eye first, then redefining
it's trajectory.

That's why I think having unclutter by default is not such a good idea
(even if the omnipresence of the mouse cursor is a challenging usability
and design problem). We should try to think about redesigning it (the
hard way), before deciding to give it an invisible state when idle (the
easy way).

Thanks for reading!
Davidc


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