No. The reason it is more efficient is because the mouse pointer usually hovers more around the left and upper edges of the windows. That is where all the most frequent menus live are and most often used toolbar buttons. You can think of it as the logical origin of the window. For example the 'File->Save As..." menu, the "File->Close" menu, the "Back & Home" buttons on the browser and so on.
It would be an interesting HCI project to run a background statistics gatherer that would record mouse coordinates relative the window in focus.
The only time I usually move the mouse to right is to scroll (but I personally use the mouse wheel for scrolling) and resize the window. But most of the time it hovers on the left side.
Also, just because you hold the mouse in the right hand doesn't say anything where the cursor is on the screen. You would have to consider where the cursor already is when you want to close/minimize/maximize the window and how far you would have to "travel" with it.
Another 2 things to consider:
1) Mouse travel might seem like a very small change, but the action of closing a window is very frequent. So a small change multiplied many times can add to quite a bit.
2) This ends up working even better for laptops since a trackpad already offers a fairly small working surface compared to the surface available for a desktop mouse. The shorter the distance the cursor moves, the less trackpad "strokes" one has to perform.
>It would be an interesting HCI project to run a background statistics gatherer that would record mouse coordinates relative the window in focus.
It would indeed.
My mouse cursor definitely lives at teh right about 2/10 in from the right screen edge.
I do use shortcuts to access menus (as well as mouse, I'm fickle) but would see your comments as reasons to invert the menubar menu order and arrange them from the right rather than reason to move other stuff left.
But I'm probably an anomaly. In MS Windows (which I rarely use) my Vista install has the taskbar [vertically] on the right.
HN's reply button often annoys me because it is left aligned whilst as I'm a L-R text reader the proper position to me would be the right as on completion that is where my gaze falls.
KDE dialogs usually have Cancel/OK on right and help and other auxiliaries on the left. For example the systemsettings dialog has "apply" on the right, which inline with my above thinking seems the correct position.
Physical mouse travel for someone with all left-aligned action buttons could still be greater than someone using a "fast" mouse with action inputs spread across the screen.
No. The reason it is more efficient is because the mouse pointer usually hovers more around the left and upper edges of the windows. That is where all the most frequent menus live are and most often used toolbar buttons. You can think of it as the logical origin of the window. For example the 'File->Save As..." menu, the "File->Close" menu, the "Back & Home" buttons on the browser and so on.
It would be an interesting HCI project to run a background statistics gatherer that would record mouse coordinates relative the window in focus.
The only time I usually move the mouse to right is to scroll (but I personally use the mouse wheel for scrolling) and resize the window. But most of the time it hovers on the left side.
Also, just because you hold the mouse in the right hand doesn't say anything where the cursor is on the screen. You would have to consider where the cursor already is when you want to close/minimize/maximize the window and how far you would have to "travel" with it.
Another 2 things to consider:
1) Mouse travel might seem like a very small change, but the action of closing a window is very frequent. So a small change multiplied many times can add to quite a bit.
2) This ends up working even better for laptops since a trackpad already offers a fairly small working surface compared to the surface available for a desktop mouse. The shorter the distance the cursor moves, the less trackpad "strokes" one has to perform.
EDIT: formatting & syntax