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Help users click right
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Bigger buttons and icons are better for users to point and click. Size of clickable elements becomes an important issue for older users and users with eye sight problems. But there is usually a constraint on the available screen real estate.
One approach to partially solve the problem could be to increase the size of such elements when required i.e. when the user hovers over the element the corresponding elements size is increased. This assumes that the user is capable of recognizing the element, and so the solution is partial. This provides a much convenient way of pointing and clicking.
This is borrowed from OS-X’s dock. Where the icons on the dock increase in size when the mouse pointer hovers over them. Its easier to click on the magnified icons and also it we are sure that we clicked the right icon.
For web pages, this could be done by Javascript code. However, this hits performance. Instead, if the browser could natively support this for all clickable elements. In such a case, the web developer can decide on which elements need to be magnified on mouse hover.
- This page was last modified 09:09, 20 June 2008.
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