Re: Whitespace (was: Re: GNOME Compliance Labels)

[Soren Harward <soren cinternet net>]

I've volunteered to write the section for the Style Guide (or whatever
it's called now) about dialog box layout, and one thing which it a VERY
major part of this is whitespace.  So far, these are the general rules
I've got:

- between 8-16 pixels between widgets/elements
- vertical whitespace is better than horizontal
- everything should be aligned in columns/rows
- visual grouping
	* use of lines / frames
	* separation of "actions" (ie "okay, cancel" buttons) and
	  "options"

Quite a bit more.  I think this enough for a healthy discussion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                Soren Harward               | Windows 95/98 DOES come
 Internet Information Systems Administrator | with a tool to recover
               Cinternet, Inc.              | from Registry
 Voice: 891-1228        soren@cinternet.net | corruption.
      http://www.cinternet.net/~soren/      | It's called 'FDISK'.
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>"Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" writes:
> > Windows apps, in general, have less whitespace than almost every Unix app.
> > Yes, I'll say that to that degree of certainty.  And you know what?  They
> > look better.  There's a *reason* Windows 3.1 looks like crap compared to 95.
>
>Yes, but I'm not arguing against that point at all. :) I'm with you on
>this one--to a point. Too much whitespace can be bad. Too little can
>be bad. The right amount can be bad if it's in the wrong places. 
>
>Properly used, in the right places, it can make all the difference in
>the world. 
>
>Besides, there's LOTSA reasons Win 3.x apps look like crap. :)