Labels, widgets and click targets in KDE/Qt

Florian Graessle holehan at gmx.de
Fri Jun 30 12:36:12 BST 2006


According to Fitts' Law targets that are smaller require more time to
acquire. (See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts'_law )

If one looks at labels and widgets connected to them there are parts in
KDE/Qt where Fitts' Law is well implemented. Think of checkboxes where
not only the checkbox as such is a click target. The corresponding label
can be clicked as well, largely increasing the click target size.

When it comes to text fields, drop downs or spin boxes, the click target
size could be largely increased as well:

Current KDE/Qt behaviour
========================
Currently only the textfields, text boxes, dropdowns, spin boxes etc. as
such are clickable -- and not the labels connected to them. Users have
to aim for the widgets, which can get pretty small at times, to select them.

Suggested behaviour
===================
To increase the click target size the labels should be click targets as
well.

See http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~soma/kde/labelselection.html for examples.

I am sure increasing the click target size in the aforementioned way
would mean a great enhancement. What do others think?
How about the coding aspect? Is this something KDE can solve or would it
be Qt/Trolltech's call?

Florian



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