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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

If they want to make the window controls like the window controls on Mac OS X, I'm fine with that. (I use Mac OS X a lot anyway, and am already comfortable with controls on the left side of the window.) They should at least get it right, however, with the close button on the far left of the title bar, and the minimize and expand buttons to the right of that button.

It looks to me like they just moved the right hand centric window controls to the left, which is terrible ergonomics and design.

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OS X doesn't suffer from the File Menu/Close Button proximity problem either since the menu bar isn't attached to the window. That proximity alone should be a disqualifier for this new layout.

As a long time Mac OS X user I recall the general feeling was that the Mac OS X window controls where a big step back from Mac OS 9. Most felt that they put all 3 controls on the same side (rather than put the dangerous close button on the opposite side) for purely aesthetic reasons i.e. so they could use the traffic light metaphor. Which is a bit cheesy when you think about it.

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini covered this complaint in 2000, in a quite excellently detailed look at the usability of the new OS X controls.

http://www.asktog.com/columns/034OSX-FirstLook.html

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> People with experience with Windows know how easy it is to hit the wrong control and accidentally close down the whole application when setting it aside was the goal. Apple has actually provided some pretty decent spacing in these controls, in addition to enlarging their size. I wouldn't expect the kind of error rates from this that people have been predicting, although the original scheme of having "dangerous" on one side of the title bar and "benign" on the other made a lot more sense.

I think the key complaint at the time was:

> The button sequence is also a problem, in that it clashes badly with both the current layout and with Windows. This will also be a problem.

Plus ça change....

Might be a little bit off topic, but the detached menu bar gradually pisses me off as screen gets bigger. It's really a long-distance travel for the mouse to click the menu on a 1920x1200 screen. Now Apple is rolling out 27' iMac with an even bigger screen ...

The situation gets even worse when I use multiple monitors as menu bar only shows on one of them.

I agree. Fitt's law falls apart at high resolution

I'm not convinced it falls apart. It seems more like a failure to take account for the distance you must travel on your return from the menu bar.

Interesting I have no problem with it on my 30" monitor. But then again I don't use the menus very often.

I don't use menus often, either. I guess this design really forces app developers to carefully choose buttons and other widgets on the UI to avoid menu as much as possible.

But on the occasions when menu is required, the experience sucks big on my dual-monitor setting. And there is no keyboard shortcut to ease the pain.

Use control+F2 to focus on the menu bar. :)

Yeah I know that trick ... but it's not quite the same as ALT+(underlined character of the menu item) thing on other systems. For fast typists, it's pretty awkward to hit the  first and then use arrow keys to move around. I wanna go directly to "File" menu by hitting SUPER+F, for example :|

Well you can hit control+f2 and then hit F for file. :)

Yes I could do that ... but I left the F1-12 keys on my MacBook to its default, which controls dim the screen, volume and stuff like that. So to press CTRL+F2 I actually have to press FN+CTRL+F2. Try this combination on a MacBook (with only the left CTRL) and see how awkward it feels ... It completely screws the experience of "shortcuts".

The proximity of toolbars in OSX can be a problem in relation to the window controls. In Safari for example the back button is extremely close to the close button in the top left of the window. Unless we want to waste a ton of screen space on isolating window controls I'm not sure there are any better options out there. You can't assume the top right of the window will be devoid of other UI controls so it's not totally safe either. Somewhere in the past I remember reading about the idea of making UI controls "sticky" by slowing or snapping the cursor to a control when you got near it along with using some haptic feedback built into the mouse. I think these are both better ideas than trying to shuffle around pixels to solve the problem. No matter where you put it there will always be a chance of a miscommunication between your eyes and clicking finger.

Someone mentioned multiple monitors/high resolution -- personally I think none of the major desktop operating systems have scaled to handle multiple monitors or high resolution displays very well. We're still stuck with this idea everything useful has to be on the edges of the screen.

The 5th location by Fitt's law is the current position of the pointer, and Openbox (Linux) has the ability to open the 'start menu' there.

Amen.

I use both OS X and Ubuntu and I don't mind remapping my behaviours depending on the context. But if you make things similar but not quite the same... Irritating!

I'm not sure that Ubuntu should be copying OSX but if they are going to do so, then bite the bullet and do it.

The title should also be centered if they're going that route. I wish I could explain why, but it just looks funny with the title right next to the buttons.

When using Gnome I've always configured them to be on the left anyway. But using the same order as in OS X, close on the far left.

People still have the choice to move them to the right if they want. Viva la choice. Windows and OS X both suck in that regard (though I understand them wanting the consistency).

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