Comment 33 for bug 253709

"Which means that they appear inconsistently from side to side!"

it means they appear nearest the mouse. we used to do "always on the same side" display and that turned out to be (unexpectedly) awkward for people. even with consistent-side-display, when widgets were pushed up against the edge of the screen, the handle had to be shown on the other side anyways, making for inconsistency. so we experimented with "nearest the mouse" which at least was consistent in all cases and tested well.

"a resize corner in the bottom left corner would still be more customary"

* interferes with widget contents and widget interaction (unless it was kept outside the widget)

* still doesn't work for widgets at or near the bottom of the screen

* would actually have the same basic behaviour as the current system does (opposite corner anchored) with the only diff being that it sizes "downwards" instead of "upwards"