Re: Word-a-Day: button, command button, toggle button

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Shaun McCance wrote on 26/04/08 19:28:
> 
> On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 13:22 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>...
>>      Refer to a button using only its label if possible: for example,
>>      "click 'Theme Details'". If avoiding ambiguity requires specifying
>>      its type, call it a "button".
> 
> I'm tending to lean more and more this way myself.
> I think there's still utility in using the label
> and the word "button" when it's not the direct
> object of the verb "click", such as:
> 
>   "Pressing Alt+U activates the 'Customize' button."

Sure. (Not that that's a realistic example, but I get your point.)

>> And while I remember: there should be a guideline somewhere that when a 
>> control's label ends in an ellipsis, help text referring to that 
>> control's label should omit the ellipsis. (The ellipsis confuses any 
>> following punctuation, and its normal job -- hinting at further steps 
>> required -- is obviated by the visibility of further help text.)
> 
> I don't think I've ever seen a button with an ellipsis.
> I was going to make this recommendation for menu items.

Ellipses are a site of rampant confusion in Gnome, thanks to
inconsistency in the HIG. But examples of buttons that correctly have
ellipses can be found in F-Spot's Add-in Manager ("Install Add-ins...",
"Repositories...", "Uninstall..."), Inkscape's "Export Bitmap" window
("Browse...") and its "Fill and Stroke" palette ("Edit..."), and
Epiphany's Personal Data window ("Clear All..."), to name just three.

>...
>>> Click the 'Attach a file' (#) button on the toolbar.
>> 
>> Shorter would be "Click the # button in the toolbar", marked up such 
>> that the icon has the same accessible text in the help as it does in 
>> the GUI itself. It would also be less confusing, in that people 
>> wouldn't look for a label that didn't exist.
> 
> As I wrote this, I was thinking that perhaps the tooltip
> or accessible name should be used as a description, but
> not actually marked up as a label, to avoid the problem
> of causing the user to look for that label.  But it may
> be hard to construct sentences that don't sound dumb.
> 
> Anyway, here are three concerns I have with only using
> the image:
> 
> 1) We need to make some recommendation on what to do
> in text-only environments.

If the application is being used in a text-only environment, then so is
the help, and vice versa. So if the image is "marked up such that the
icon has the same accessible text in the help as it does in the GUI
itself", there will be no mismatch.

The only exception to this will be referring to printed help, so the
style sheet for printing should include both the icon and the label.

> 2) Toolbar buttons have labels, but only if you're the
> kind of person who uses toolbars with labels (which I'm
> not).  What's the recommendation there?

In Mallard, the help should know whether the toolbar is icon-only (and
whether a particular button is in my customized toolbar at all), and
adjust accordingly.

Where that isn't possible -- for example in help Web sites, and when
printing help pages -- use both.

> 3) Icon themes make it difficult for us to show exactly the right
> icon.

I doubt there's anything you can do about this. (I think icon themes
will turn out to be a hoax, because third-party applications will often
need to include icons that are unique to them, and it's unreasonable to
expect them to include variations of that icon to match any possible
theme you might have chosen.)

>...
>> Same here -- referring to a "toggle button" is assuming knowledge that 
>> most people won't have, and I don't remember ever seeing a theme where 
>> toggle buttons looked different from normal buttons anyway. Just use 
>> "button".
> 
> I don't disagree.  My allowance for these terms is perhaps
> not as clear as it should be.  I was mostly thinking of the
> case where you're trying to explain how the interface works
> to a beginner.
> 
>   "That's a toggle button.  When you click it, it stays
>   pressed in and changes the way..."
> 
> Something like that.
>...

If so, then it's only ever going to be used once (in the tutorial that
introduces people to using a computer for the first time), so it doesn't
really need to be included in a style guide.

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