toolbars violate Fitts's law--can't click at screen edge

[Ian]

When in fullscreen, the toolbar buttons at the screen edges should extend all the way to the edge, like the Mac menubar the Windows taskbar, and the Gnome panel all do. This is an application of Fitts's law[0], which states that a target button is easier to hit if it has a larger area. Putting a button on the edge gives it effectively infinite depth.

[0]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Do you have examples of other GTK+ applications which override border / thickness of toolbars or buttons defined in the currently used desktop theme in such a way when in fullscreen mode (<F11>)?

Wouldn't this apply to e.g. scrollbars as well (i.e. if implemented, all widgets touching any edge of the screen in real fullscreen mode <F11> would have to ignore borders/thickness as defined in the GTK+ theme, as well margins, padding or frames within the containing widget on the side touching the edge of the screen)?

[Ian (ian-dalton)]

The only program I can think of that does this on *nix is Firefox. Lots of programs do it on Windows, including (IIRC) Photoshop and Illustrator.

It should apply to scroll bars. Firefox lets you use the scroll bars from the screen edge (although Fitts' law says the easiest target to hit is wherever the mouse currently is, so usually the scroll wheel is all you need).

I don't know whether it's a good idea for all apps to ignore such borders, but apps that run in full-screen with toolbars on the side should.