As a non native english speaker, this mail won't be long. I will just share some assertions that I believe being true for a vast majority of users.
1) When I see my mouse cursor on my desktop, it means my computer is ready for action. 2) When the mouse cursor is acting strange (like disappearing or slowly moving), it means that there is something wrong with my computer. 3) My mouse cursor is my virtual hand. When I don't use my real hands, I move them away and I wouldn't want them to "disappear" whenever I don't use them. 4) Interacting with my computer include relying on several states of my mouse cursor (busy, active, ready to grab or to interact). Make it disappear and I have lost an indicator of an essential state of my computer : its ability or not, to do things. 5) When I don't see my cursor before moving it, it's like not seeing my taskbar and having to alt-tab. And the last two, maybe the most important ones : 6) When I see my mouse cursor, I instinctively know the amount of movement my hand or finger will need to take it to another place of the screen. 7) It's easier to define the future trajectory of an immobile object, than having to catch a moving object with my eye first, then redefining it's trajectory. That's why I think having unclutter by default is not such a good idea (even if the omnipresence of the mouse cursor is a challenging usability and design problem). We should try to think about redesigning it (the hard way), before deciding to give it an invisible state when idle (the easy way). Thanks for reading! Davidc _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
