2009/06/22

The ever diminishing refresh/reload button in browsers

I was ticked off that the resize button in Internet Explorer 7 had gotten so small that a lot of precision is needed to click on it. Instead of the full size toolbar button in IE 6 there is a tiny little button that not only was smaller but also further away from the rest of the navigation buttons. So instead of moving the mouse to the top left corner of the screen and being able to move back and forth and resize there was now a need to move the mouse to the other size of the address field.

Since I use Mac OS X for my daily work and only use Windows for testing I shrugged and got on. But now Apple has made the same design flaw in Safari 4.

Is it just me who finds it annoying and what ever happened to Fitts's law?

I am well aware that there are keyboard combinations available but I wonder what user testing and thinking might lay behind this change. Funnily instead of Microsoft borrowing good ideas from Apple, Apple is suddenly borrowing bad ideas from Microsoft. Luckily, Firefox has kept it's refresh/reload button same size and accessible.

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