Started by Jonah Feld (@slow_web) ·
why the Mac menu bar is glued to the top of the screen
6 sources · 28 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Why is the Mac menu bar at the top of the screen instead of on each window?
- Ended at
- Pie menu
The Trail
- “why is mac menu bar at top of screen not on window” (google.com)
- Fitts's law (en.wikipedia.org)
- Paul Fitts (en.wikipedia.org)
air force psychologist. his earlier work was on pilots grabbing the wrong cockpit controls
- Menu bar (en.wikipedia.org)
you can't overshoot the top edge, so the target is effectively infinitely tall
- Hick's law (en.wikipedia.org)
- Pie menu (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
Fitts's law (1954): the time to hit a target grows with distance and shrinks with target size. Screen edges and corners act like targets of near-infinite depth, so they're the fastest things to hit. Menus inside each window are easier to understand but slower to reach. Pie menus use the same idea by putting every option the same short distance away.
Keep going
- Ebbinghaus memorized nonsense syllables for years so we'd have the forgetting curve · Jonah Feld · 7 sources
- the crosswalk button probably isn't doing anything · Jonah Feld · 4 sources
- why Japanese train staff point at things and say them out loud · Lin Chen · 4 sources
- the guy who invented infinite scroll regrets it · Hazel Park · 6 sources