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A screen hotspot, in
A screen hotspot, in computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...
, provides a special area on the display screen of a computer for hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...
ing or for other GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
-based activity (such as re-direction, pop-up display, macro execution, etc.).
Hotspots may not look visually distinct; however, a mouseover
In computing, a mouseover, or hover box is a graphical control element that is activated when the user moves or hovers the pointer over a trigger area, usually with a mouse, but also possible with a digital pen. Mouseover control elements are c ...
operation over elements such as hyperlinks, buttons or idle windows will often reveal them by changing the shape of the pointer.
The corners and edges of the whole screen may also act as hotspots. Those are used extensively in Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
, where they are referred to as "hot corners".
According to Fitts's law
Fitts's law (often cited as Fitts' law) is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics. The law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio betw ...
, which predicts the time it takes to reach a target area, moving mouse and trackball pointers to those spots is easy and fast. As the pointer usually stops when reaching a screen edge, the size of those spots can be considered of virtual infinite size, so the hot corners and edges can be reached quickly by throwing the pointer toward the edges.
See also
*Context menu
A context menu (also called contextual, shortcut, and pop up or pop-up menu) is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choice ...
*Image map
In HTML and XHTML, an image map is a list of coordinates relating to a specific image, created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to different destinations (as opposed to a normal image link, in which the entire area of the image links to a ...
References
Hypertext {{Computer-stub