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I am not an Ion/RatPoison user, and I don't know if I *could* become one, because for some reason I prefer to have control over the exact size and position of my windows (this size is seldom "maximized", except on very small screens). But it is interesting and I think relevant that they follow a sort of meta-fitt's law/rule: when using the keyboard (as we usually are), the fastest point to reach on screen still involves your keyboard.

That said, I've observed that conversations of Fitt's law and the archetypal windows/mac interfaces concentrate on the corners and top of the screen. I think this is probably because mac users are more aware of the design philosophy of their platform, or even just more aware of design philosophy itself (as a whole) than windows users. This isn't really a criticism of either camp, and since I don't really know a lot about either anymore, is probably based on inaccurate stereotypes.

Still, the discussion almost always ignores or merely mentions in passing the fastest point to reach on the screen, the fifth point of fitt's law/rule, your pointers current position.

Windows and the applications that run on it (and most Linux applications, too) heavily use this position for contextual menus. In my linux environments of choice, the context of the root window is a list of my programs, which when my pointer is not inside the context of an application further makes use of this point. On interfaces coming from apple, they still use it, but less heavily, and usually less contextually (because they always include these options elsewhere on the interface).

I think that mouse gestures were an attempt at bypassing the limitations of "aiming", but I feel that people with physical handicaps or people who are just plain not practiced with a mouse will probably struggle to do any but the simplest mouse gestures. Does anyone know of any studies done on this that prove or disprove my guess? Have there been any other ideas in user interface history to utilize the fifth point?