Mode Mojo
MyWi, the coolest window moving and resizing program known to me, has three modes of operation: Move, Resize along the right and bottom edges and Resize along the top and right edges. Early builds actually had separate grow and shrink modes. When using these builds, i frequently found myself struggling to get the window size that i wanted and wasn't able to formulate why that was so. Then i read this article about item selection by John Gruber. While the piece is about selecting items from a list, or selecting text, it perfectly articulated my problem. When growing a window to the right, if i overshot my mark, i would instinctively use the left arrow key to correct my mistake. Since i was in grow mode, this would of course grow my window to the left, rather than undo my previous overgrowth. By using an anchored model (where one corner of the window stays in place) MyWi started to behave more predictably. Stated more accurately: it was much more difficult for me to misuse MyWi. As a bonus my lengthy usability study (sample size of 1) suggests that resizing windows along the right and bottom edges of a window is by far the most common resize operation. This is supported by the fact that Mac OS windows have always (unto this very day) had their resize widget only on the bottom right corner. While i've been very happy with the separate resize modes, i can't say that i'm thrilled with the three hot-key approach. During the v1.1 cycle i'll be experimenting with other mechanisms to select the mode. For now, let's just try to this thing out the door: 51 days until launch day.