Forum Discussion
Vertical tabs should be consistent with Fitts' law
I'm loving vertical tabs BUT, it's annoying that it doesn't "respect" Fitts' law: when the window is maximized, when your cursor is all the way on the left of the screen, the cursor should be on top of the tab so you can just click it. Instead, tabs are a little to the right.... With horizontal tabs on top, browsers have be consistent with Fitts' law for years, vertical tabs should too! Please make this change!
- Over 2 years and this still hasn't been fixed 😞 You cannot deny that having tabs adhere to Fitts' law is important, because Edge's tabs in horizontal mode do. And if you decided to break this with horizontal tabs, you would be swamped with complaints from users. Fitts' law is important for tabs! So why would vertical tabs not adhere to Fitts' law? There is no valid reason, if there was I wouldn't keep coming back to this. This is such basic common sense stuff folks...
- Not saying that it's a good thing but it seems the entire WinUI 3 is made in such a way that certain (most) buttons have un-clickable empty area around them. (You will notice that in the new Settings app the same problem is there, you can't go all the way to the left and click a setting, same with the new Windows app redesigns we're seeing recently, and also in context-menu buttons) Since Microsoft Edge follows the Windows 11, and hence, the WinUI 3 design principles, we observe the Fitts' Law inconsistency. This may also be the reason why the Edge team hasn't looked into this issue yet; maybe they want to keep it this way.
- apparently someone did look at it but they're not telling us what's their thoughts are (WontFix? Or do they think it's a P5 for some reason?). If anyone is doubting how important Fitts' law is to the user experience: in 2020 a change in Chrome accidentally moved the new tab button down a single pixel, which broke Fitts' law when the window was maximized, and they immediately received a bunch of complaints. They fixed it in about 1 month of it being filed... and that's just the new tab button! So ya, they really should fix this
(here is that Chrome bug https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1136557 )
- So is this "WontFix" ??
- Edge team, what on earth is going on here? This should have been fixed by now. I also did a google search about it and found a reddit post (that mentions this discussion!) https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/pu0rii/why_wont_they_fix_this_issue_with_vertical_tabs/
- Folks, this is low-hanging fruit!
- Hey everyone, here's a similar request I "filed" having to do with the "Hide title bar" UI. Please give it an upvote so the Edge team knows people want that one fixed too https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/issue-request-make-buttons-and-url-bar-follow-fitts-law-when/m-p/2536720#M48562
- Good point. Just to clarify, this does not mean that the appearance of the floating tabs would need to change (i.e., having the tabs visually flush with the left edge of the screen, which would look bad). It just means that when your cursor is flush with the left edge, next to one of the tabs, clicking in that position should act like clicking on that tab. As has been said, the New tab button already works like this.
- in this video, former Microsoftie Jensen Harris talks about how an extremely similar Fitts' Law issue took almost 10 years for Microsoft to fix! Folks, it's 2021... it's so depressing that there's still issues like this 😞
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wbnf87dGms - This implementation would greatly improve the usability of vertical guides
Edge team, other sidebar UI's in Windows respect this. For example, File Explorer, Settings and Taskbar (when Taskbar is set to "Left"). Please just fix this, it's silly and annoying
