Comment 230 for bug 532633

Can people please stop complaining about the window controls being on the left side? Windows has them on the right side, but it’s completely illogical to have them on the right side. The GUI of Windows is completely illogical and causes it’s users to get RSI, because of all the mouse movement when working in Windows.

To start an application, you’ve got to go to the lower left corner of the screen to click on the Start button. Then you want to do some tasks in this application, so you’ve got to go to the upper left corner to get to the File menu, the Edit menu or the icons on the toolbar. Then you want to close the application and you’ve got to go to the upper right corner to click on the X. Then you want to start another application and you’ve got to go all the way back to the lower left corner.

This is completely illogical and causes RSI, because of all the mouse movement. Apple already figured out it’s better to have the window controls on the left, because everything else is on the left (menu bar starts from the left, icons on the tool bar start on the left and tabs on a tab bar start from the left). Gnome already figured out it’s better to have the Applications menu on the top of the screen, because everything else is on the top of the screen (menu bar, tool bar and tab bar are all on the top of the screen, so applications are more quickly accessable when they’re on the top too).

Moving the window controls to the left is the best decision Canonical ever made. The applications are on the upper left corner, the menu bars, the tool bars and the tab bars are all on the top of the screen and most of the time only the left part of these bars are filed with menu items, icons and tabs (especially since resolutions of computer screens are getting higher and higher). Most of the clicks are being done in the upper left area of the screen, so it’s completely obvious to have the window controls in this area too.

Even before the first screens of this new button layout appeared I already made the change myself. I’m running Ubuntu with the window controls on the left for more than a year now and mouse movement has been reduced. Now everything is just in one place (the upper left area of the screen). Before I moved the window controls to the left side, I was constantly moving my mouse from the left side to the right side of the screen when opening and closing applications. Completely illogical. The left side is definately the right place for window controls.