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

1. http://hagemaenner.de/stuff/inkscape/preferences/inkscape_new_prefs_mockup3....

2. 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

On Dec 19, 2005, at 9:50 AM, Andreas Nilsson wrote:

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.

Are you sure??

I seem to recall a question mark icon in at least some KDE help buttons in dialogs. A "check" icon and "slashed X" were also prevalent.

Yup. I just checked KDE 3.0 screenshots at kde.org, and they're full of happy-happy icons.

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde300shots.php

And still all over the place in KDE 3.4 http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde340shots.php

Ideally icons showing would be controlled by the theme in play, just like with toolbar items. Then on a Windows-ish theme it would appear like Windows (no icon), but on another theme (like a default GNOME or KDE-ish) theme and have icons present.

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Andreas Nilsson wrote:

[...]

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.

You aren't the only one who feels this way but I believe themes are the way people are expected to deal with this.

Gtk is a cross platform toolkit and efforts are being made to better enabled applications to integrate with the native enviroment (including things like button order switching).

- Alan