OSNews

First off, great article (as usual) Thom.

I can confirm, Vista's start "orb" can be activated by the corner. One that you missed is you can close a maximized window by the upper right hand corner as well. Which is kind of funny, because in Vista, that means that the button "Hit area" extends a good 15 pixels beyond the visual indication, and only when the window is maximized. Same thing with the start orb, visually one would think that it wouldn't work, but as soon as you try, you get the right (if inconsistent) behavior.

As for Fitts' law becoming less important with training, I disagree. A badly done interface element will always be harder to use then a well done interface element. Just because the guys in the worlds strongest man competition CAN throw logs like they are sticks does not make throwing logs easy, even though their training has brought them to the point where they can do it as easily as normal guys could through a stick. Same deal with interfaces, just because you are an expert at using a poorly defined interface doesn't make the design irrelevant, and if you compare to a guy who has the same amount of training on a well designed interface, at the end of the day the guy on the well designed one will have more energy doing the same thing. Case in point, I have been using computer mice for about twenty years now, and I still find it easier to hit corners then 40x10px menus floating in the middle of the screen.

HOWEVER, I completely agree with you that Fitts' Law is blown completely out of proportion by armchair designers. You would think by talking to some people that it is the one and only concept or heuristic in interface design, and the sole metric one uses to judge the worth of an interface.