Re: [Usability] Better look Re: (no subject)

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 13 Dec, 2005, at 8:41 PM, GSR - FR wrote:
> Hi, jnoreiko yahoo com (2005-12-13 at 1104.40 +0000):
> ...
> > To be usable, controls do need to be clear, simple to understand, and  
> > easy to read. I think that the current default on my distro
> > (Ubuntu's 'Human' theme) and the GNOME default 'Clearlooks' both do  
> > this very well.

Both Human and Clearlooks, though, like Luna, Platinum, and Windows 3.x  
before them, are very cartoonish. They look like pen drawings of  
controls, rather than actual controls.

Sadly, from looking briefly through the gtk2 themes on art.gnome.org,  
they all either have that pixelly cartoon appearance, or they have a  
light-on-dark color scheme (great for an alternative theme, poor for a  
default), or they have sunken checkboxes and radiobuttons (which looks  
wrong when embedded in listboxes, which is why Windows 98 and 2000  
often used an inconsistent flat style for checkboxes and radiobuttons  
inside listboxes), or they're ripoffs of Aqua.

> ...
> My take is that sometimes there would be less confusion if things were
> shown in a more pleasing way. And yes, I know the HIG puts examples to
> demostrate how the proposed style is better (vs a crappy old one, no
> idea if real or faked for the occassion, but so bad that anything has
> to look better). It also covers nice ways to put text in dialogs and
> so on. That does not mean it could not be changed to make it better.
> The unbalance to the left side and the expansion of things to edges
> always looked strange to me in dialogs, sometimes even disturbing.
> ...

Yes, currently the HIG says: "Left-align components and labels, unless  
all the labels in a group have very different lengths. If they do,  
right-align the labels instead, to ensure that no controls end up too  
far away from their corresponding labels."
<http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/design-text- 
labels.html#layout-label-position>
<http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/design- 
window.html#improved-layout-figure>

This encourages internal inconsistency, leftward imbalance, and columns  
of colons that almost line up but not quite. It's also an impractical  
guideline to follow, since you can't reasonably know how different the  
label lengths are going to be in every language your software is  
translated into, and translators can't specify the alignment  
themselves.

Calum, can this be changed? I'd suggest: "When a group of controls is  
arranged vertically, line up the left edges of the controls (or of the  
first control in each horizontal subgroup), and right-align labels that  
are placed to the left of the controls."

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/