Re: User interface suggestions

[Calum Benson <calum benson ireland sun com>]

Jörg Rathlev wrote:

> UI wishlist += A mail client that recognizes mailing list messages and then
> offers an extra command "reply to list".

There is actually an RFC for this somewhere, that describes a new header
that mailing list messages should use... I forget the details off-hand! 
I've seen some mail clients that manage to do it even without that
header, though...

> Or like the Windows "quick start area" in the task bar. This is a great
> feature, I use it all the time to start Internet Explorer very quickly and
> have some of my other commonly used apps in there. But it wouldn't work
> without easily recognizable icons...

True, although on Windows it also eats into the space used by the
taskbar, so you can't usefully put more than five or six apps in there
if (like me) you want as much text on your taskbar as possible.

> A very good description of why icons work is given in Apple's human
> interface guidelines, which have a whole chapter for icons.

Another good reference is "The Icon Book" by William Horton (published
by Wiley)... I wouldn't necessarily use the (hundreds) of example icons
it contains as they stand, as some of them look a bit dated by today's
standards, but the design principles described remain valid.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

                Haud ma coat-- it's laldy time!