Re: Tips on what to avoid

["Oskar Liljeblad" <osk hem passagen se>]

From: Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>

>> - The help submenu should not be right justified.
>> There's really not much point in right justifying it. The help menu
>> should be the last menu though.
>>
>
>right justification makes it much easier to find in a consistent interface,
>imho. if it ALWAYS is right justified, you can find it at one glance.

Yes, but if the size of the window changes, so will the position of the help
menu. My personal experience is that it IS easier to find the menu if it is
the last LEFT justified menu item, since the left part of the window is
almost always visible on screen. As a side note, Microsoft decided to make
the help menu left justified in all applications after Windows 3.11.

Since this is, I guess, a rather personal taste thing, it would be good if
this was configurable. The function gnome_app_create_menus() could be
designed to automaticly insert a GNOME_APP_UI_JUSTIFY_RIGHT item before the
"Help" menu. Maybe this is a bit too "overkill" though...

>> (As a side note, color indication is better for OK and Cancel buttons.
>> Green or blue stands for "OK", "Go", while red stands for "Stop",
>> "Abort", "Cancel". I don't know if this is possible to implement at all,
>> but I recall there was something like this in Win98.)
>
>I don't think that is a good idea. first of all, depending on the overal
>colors of the program, one of these might simply be bad to read. second,
>colored text in general makes the text less easy to read. third, colors
>mean different things around the world.

You're right, color indication isn't that good - too many colors just makes
a mess. (In Window 98 the text of a "Cancel"-type button was underlined
and colored red when the mouse was over it. At least in a few Window 98
betas, I don't know about the final.)

Oskar Liljeblad (osk@hem.passagen.se)