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by shit_game 697 days ago
> Mouse interfaces are fundamentally different, because you have much more pointing precision, so it pays off to show more data on the screen. You don't have to cram your interface with with spaces to make it scan-friendly, you just use heterogeneous elements and colors.

Another massive consideration is that a mouse (and a keyboard, if you want to expand from UI to UX) pairs that precision with significantly more available control actions - LMB, RMB, MMB, scrolling, and hovering.

With a mouse, the edges and corners of the screen are the easiest and most reliable areas to interact with; this is the inverse of touchscreen UIs, in which the center of the screen is the most ergonomic area of the screen to use, and edges and corners are practically unusable, leading to large margins in almost every UI targeting them.

With controls like LMB/RMB, you can also have functionality _immediately_ available wherever the pointer is located, which is now quintessential for practically all desktop applications, and which can't be faithfully emulated with touchscreen UIs.