I’ve lost my mile-wide screen corners!

I finally got a second monitor recently and set it up as an extended desktop. While I’m very happy with all the extra real-estate goodness I’m pretty miffed that my apps now have lost two magic corners. I’m referring here to Fitts’ law and its implications in computer screen real-estate. Fitts’ law is essentially about calculating how fast one can reach an object on the screen with a mouse pointer from a given starting position (the smaller and farther it is, the slower it is going to be). The magic corners refer to the edges of the screen where you can reach instantly because I can just throw the mouse pointer in that direction. In other words the edge of the screen is of infinite size, so reaching there is very quick. This is especially useful in cases like reaching the close button of a maximized app, or the start button. Now in a multi-monitor setup one edge of the screen is no longer infinite. The mouse just moves to the other screen. Now when I try to reach the close button of a maximized app on my first screen, it inevitably lands up in the second screen and brings up the system menu of the app there. I guess I’ll just have to get used to not throwing my mouse around too freely.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 02, 2008
  Move the 2nd monitor (in the virtual desktop layout, not physically move it, heh) so its top edge is a bit lower than the other monitor's top edge. That will give you back the mile-wide corner where the close button is.