Whether you think Office 2007 is brilliant or if you're wondering what was Microsoft thinking, Jensen Harris’ blog has some fascinating insight into UI design. He explains Fitts’ law and how it was used in the creation of Office 2007.
Think about Word 1.0, which was designed for a common maximum 640x480 screen resolution. Toolbar buttons in Word 1.0 were 20x20 buttons with 16x16 icons in them.
Word 2003, on the other hand, is commonly run at resolutions as high as 1600x1200 and beyond--yet the toolbar buttons remain the same 20x20 size they were in Word 1.0. But because the screen is so much larger, most of the time your mouse cursor will be much farther away than it could have been on a 640x480 screen. Greater mouse distances mean an increased MT target acquisition time.
In other words, the same button takes much longer to click than it did fifteen years ago.
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