RE: User interface suggestions

[Pasi Parnanen <pasi parnanen net>]

> "I nearly always have to read the GNOME menu
> text rather than using the icons for identification, which is made even
> harder because all those icons in the margin make it harder for the eye
> to scan for the start of each word."

Dick Karpinski:
> The original paper which showed that icons were better than words has
> not been fully understood. It showed icons worked well when they were
> visually distinct AND THERE WERE 3 to 9 OF THEM. Otherwise the bare
> words work better. That's almost ALL THE TIME.

i have to agree that the gnome icons aren't distinct enough. Setting a "standard" for how the icons should look would make things even worse. Making the icons less detailed could be a start. The visual equivalent of haiku poetry, concentrating on one detail... Would that help? 

As for icons vs text... I used to test this out on myself just for fun, and to me the icons are faster, sometimes much faster than looking for words. Irregular, two dimensional groups of icons (like freely placed on a desktop) worked best because of the "grouping" effect. But i always think in images first, so i really can't say how people in general think. And that is probably the point of all this. We're not creating a final solution for everyone, because the newbie and the not-so-newbie will have different needs and preferences.  

But the newbies won't know how to change the settings yet, so the default gnome setup must be geared towards them. Later on he or she can change the environment to his or her own needs, whatever that means. 

I've even seen people fill their entire windows desktops with shortcuts and even files instead of using the menu and explorer... those users will soon be using gnome, if you see what i mean.

The office offering from Newdeal inc. (www.newdealinc.com) has a four-level setting for the amount of options available in menus (and there's such a setting in each application), a bit like the meta-setting in the gnome control-panel, only with two more levels. I think the idea is good and that we seriously should consider having it in gnome too.


-- inPasible. ...says who?