Re: Help menu: Findings and thoughts

[Gregory Merchan <merchan baton phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:54:13 Ben FrantzDale wrote:
> 

> Fitts' law does little good when you have menus in a window rather than on
> the top of the screen. (You don't get the advantage of being able to slam
> your mouse to the top right in a window.) Also, help menus arn't used very
> often so if it takes more than a fraction of a second for the user to figure
> out why the help menu is hiding in the other corner then all advantages of
> Fitts' law are gone.
> 

Fitts' Law isn't just about the edges of the screen. One of the factors in the
time to acquire is the size of the target.

>From http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/

---
Mathematically, Fitts' law is stated as follows: 

MT = a + b log2(2A/W) 

where 

       MT = movement time 
       a,b = regression coefficients 
       A = distance of movement from start to target center 
       W = width of the target
---

My conclusion was that the help menu should be left justified. Sorry if that
wasn't clear.

Greg Merchan