Re: [Usability] Re: Button ordering

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Joel Becker">

> The entire point is to make the default button the one the eye hunts out
> and finds.  For "OK", my left-is-first bias is possibly just as valid as
> the eye-travels-to-bottom-right theory.  I can't say without actual user
> testing :-)

Oh man, I did an excellent video ages ago that 'proves' the edge-hugging
rule. My computers teacher and I had an argument about where buttons should
be, after he kept swearing at one program for putting them in the wrong
place (very obvious on the Macintoshes we used in class).

  I was strongly arguing for the Windows way, thoughtlessly saying something
  about the mouse being in the centre of the screen [1], and wanted to make
  a user testing video to prove him wrong. :) The subjects were our class
  and the computing staff, both teaching and support.

We built an adventure game that popped up dialogues for confirming actions
and asking various questions - terrible interface, but it did what we
needed. ;) The points of interest that 'launched' dialogues were in
different places on the screen, but the dialogues were always centred. We
only had two button layouts - the Windows way and the Mac way.

The video showed that almost everyone rested their cursor to the bottomish
right of the dialogue whilst reading, which led to everyone agreeing that
the Mac way was better. The mouse was never hugging the centre because no
one puts their cursor over the text. (Duh me.)

I really should find the video, because the really interesting thing to come
out of it was that 2 out of the three left-handers hugged the LHS whilst
reading. The other one always followed the text with his mouse. ;) Not
enough people to be really insightful, but it was interesting.

  With enough visual distinction between the default or most important
  button and the others, I don't think familiarity with the Windows layout
  matters greatly. The GTK+ themes will have to take this into account.

- Jeff

[ I had only just read about Fitt's Law, and was applying it to everything
in sight. ;) ]

-- 
     "Free software never simply picks up its marbles and goes home." -     
                            Jonathan Corbet, LWN