Mouse, Monitors
and Fitts' Law

Diagnosis

I'm a heavy mouse user on my desktop, so my mouse is running an increasing number of kilometers. In particular with respect to the surface of the element I want to hit

Modern times

At the moment the lay out of websites is often based on use for mobile devices, with desktop users as side issue.

Accessibility problem

Here the accessibility is getting out of control. Not only for persons with loss of fine motor skills for using the mouse (due to diseases, age, Parkinson etc.) and for people with visual problems, also for all "normal" others it is not userfriendly.
In fact, Fitts' Law comes into play here.

The scientific theory: Fitts' Law

ˮ ˮThe difficulty and time to hit a target is a function of the size of the target and the distance to the target.

That is a summary of rather complicated mathematics, in the beginning of the 20th century accomplished by the American psychologist Paul Fitts.

Fitts' Law in real life

Everybody knows how to practice Fitts' Law !

Conclusion

Anyway, it is easier to see and to target the mouse pointer, if the surface of an element is larger.
Also: a larger mouse pointer can be helpfull, so I made some custom cursors as on this page (the normal Windows pointers are: and  ).
 

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date: 2024-01-13
update: 2024-12-20

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