Tobias Jakobs wrote:
Am Freitag, den 16.12.2005, 19:12 +0100 schrieb Andreas Nilsson:
As there have been some talk about my old mockup of the new preferences dialog, I thought it might be nice to have another look at it. Right now [1], it's quite noisy, so I thought it might be a good time to do a bit of the kill-your-darlings. http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/inkscape_new_prefs_mockup4.png In this mockup I've done the following stuff:
- only icon, no text for the help button (don't say the same thing twice)
- no icon, just text in the close icon (same as above)
Here are some reasons why I don't like your buttons:
- This should be handelt by the theme, to make it consistent in all
apps.
- Do not use different widths of button in the same window. This will
help give a pleasing uniform visual appearance to your window that makes it easier to use.
- Without the text "Help" on the button with the underlined "H" the user
will not know how to reach the button with the keyboard.
Good point about the shortcut. The reason for making it smaller was because I viewed the help icon less important than the close button (you are more likley to hit the close button it more times than the close button). I actually realised there are no help document for the preferences dialog, so right now we shouldn't have this button at all at this point. :)
The reason I choose to do it without the icon in the button is that it look stupid on all other platforms than GNOME. Neither OSX, Windows or KDE normally use icons in buttons.
- removed the title at the top, (it's already at the left...and you
probably just clicked it).
- no icon in the top right corner (it's already at the left)
I like the icon and the title, it makes the dialog much nicer. ;) Do you like it without more?
A picture of a kitten in the dialog would make the interface really nice aswell, but it's not usefull. ;) No seriosly, I think it makes sense to remove the clutter. Less information to handle, let you focus on the information.
- no frames (the gnome hig advices them not to be used[2] )
Please read the HIG carefully. The Gnome HIG advices them not to be used for denoting groups of related controls. We don't do that in the mockup[1]. We use a Frame to show that the treeview controls the options on the right.
The last Point is, you changed the title from "Inkscape Preferences" to "Preferences", why? The Gnome HIG[4] recommends to use this:
Icon: Same as application Title Format: "Application Name" + "Preferences" Window Commands: Close, Minimize, Roll-up/Unroll Buttons: Place a Close button in the lower right corner. A Help may be placed in the lower left corner.
Good point about the title, makes handling windows easier. The frame can go back aswell for the reason you stated.
Tobias
http://hagemaenner.de/stuff/inkscape/preferences/inkscape_new_prefs_mockup3....
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-frames.html
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/controls-buttons.h...
- Andreas