Introducing a set of concepts, principles, goals, and ideas that have dramatically improved my ability to write production-quality user interfaces from scratch. Base knowledge for later parts.
"The more common, and still better, equivalent is for the user to position their mouse over the representation of the checkbox on the screen (which encodes which one is selected), and for them to both press and release their mouse after that.
...
It achieves a better bits sent to useful bits received ratio, and it achieves this in less time."
This doesn't seem true to me. A user doesn't directly specify mouse coordinates, they have to express mouse position as a delta from the current position. This is many more bits sent on average than the keybind equivalent.
For new users, graphical widgets are certainly more intuitive. But as an experienced user, ctrl-L is definitely faster and less error prone than having to click the URL box.
The first half of this article should be a must read for cognitive science and cognitive semiotics students!
"The more common, and still better, equivalent is for the user to position their mouse over the representation of the checkbox on the screen (which encodes which one is selected), and for them to both press and release their mouse after that.
...
It achieves a better bits sent to useful bits received ratio, and it achieves this in less time."
This doesn't seem true to me. A user doesn't directly specify mouse coordinates, they have to express mouse position as a delta from the current position. This is many more bits sent on average than the keybind equivalent.
For new users, graphical widgets are certainly more intuitive. But as an experienced user, ctrl-L is definitely faster and less error prone than having to click the URL box.