Re: GNOME HIG: Feedback Wanted

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the excellent feedback! I've tried to fix all of these points [1].

Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org> wrote:
...
> On the header bar page: "Header bars are incompatible with menu bars."
> On the menu bar page: "menu bars can still be an appropriate choice,
> particularly for applications that already incorporate a header
> bar." (So that's a contradiction.)

That's weird - obvious mistake. Fixed.

> The menu bar page specifies that the menu bar should contain all of the
> functionality of the app, so surely items in the app menu should be
> duplicated in the menu bar. Is this the intended advice? (It's contrary
> to what we've been advised in the past.) Either way, it'd be good to
> mention this on the app menu page as well, so that it's more visible.

I would consider an application menu to be part of the menu modal that
the menu bar belongs to. Added some guidance on that.

> In the section on app menus, we really need more guidance on the Quit
> menu item.  Some apps use Quit to close all windows of the app (which
> seems to be intended), some use it to close the current window only (to
> prevent the user from accidentally closing windows on other desktops,
> which is a real problem with the former approach), and others omit Quit
> entirely to avoid the issue. We discussed this in the past but didn't
> really come to any conclusion.

Agree that there needs to be more specific guidance here. Added something.

> On the spinners page, you recommend not using spinners if the range is
> limited on both ends. Isn't that a little strict? What about, for
> example, the time control in the preferences of GNOME Chess?

Yes, agree. (That was copied over from the old HIG, I think.) Updated.

> In the section on tabs: "Use tabs that are proportional to the width of
> their labels. Don't just set all the tabs to the same width...." But
> nowadays, tabs actually are all the same width.

Dynamic tabs always have equal widths, fixed tabs don't - which is
what you're referencing here. I've tried to make it a bit clearer, but
let me know if you think it's problematic still.

> Also, I'm not sure about the advice at the very bottom of the tabs page.
> For example, Epiphany surely needs a new tab button in its header bar,
> but I don't think it'd look good to display the tab bar when only one
> tab is open.

Ah yes. Fixed.

> On the toolbars page: "the first few buttons in a browser application
> should always include Back, Forward, Stop and Reload, in that order."
> That advice seems dated.

Good catch!

Thanks again,

Allan

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-devel-docs/commit/?id=33340f4563e996a7b22759c59010243c76977980