Comment 4 for bug 388205

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is designed to shine on netbooks[1], specifically the Dell Mini 9 and its replacement, the Mini 10v[2]. These netbooks have a two-button touchpad. This limits the fidelity of user input, particularly in mobile situations such as balancing the netbook on your lap.

Massive telemetry data has influenced UI design to follow Fitts' Law, which is rather accommodating to the loss of input fidelity by using the corners of the screen to give an effective button size of infinity [3].

"The Start Button in Windows is seemingly located in an ideal place for fast acquisition, and in recent versions of Windows that's certainly true. Prior to Windows 2000, however, the Start button had a single 'dead' pixel along the left and bottom sides of it in which clicking didn't open the Start menu. The result: slower acquisition times and a startling number of missed clicks."

Button size of the graphic can be unchanged, but the "hit area" can be increased ala Office 2007 orb in the upper-left corner.
"Although the button itself is round, the hit target for it actually extends on a maximized window all the way to the upper-left edge of the screen. As a result, accessing [most common functions] is ultra efficient."

Not that we follow what MS did blindly, but these are the results of their analysis of 1.3 billion Office 2003 user sessions [5]. That's a lot of user data, and we can benefit from their research. Let's eliminate the "dead pixels" if we can; I'm up for letting our users be "ultra efficient."

1. http://www.canonical.com/netbooks
2. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cy/2009-April/000234.html
3. http://www.dell.com/home/netbooks
4. http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
5. http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/05/568947.aspx