Re: Dropping the "Interface" tab from appearance capplet

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 29 Jul 2009, at 14:11, Thomas Wood wrote:

> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by  
> looking at
> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I  
> don't
> remember where right now).

Jared Spool, amongst many others, has studied the efficiency of icon 
+text vs icon-alone vs text-alone over the years, and this post nicely  
summarises his findings (which ties in with other studies I've read,  
but this was the first that came to hand):

<http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2009/06/28/old-news-about-icons/>

Note: 'text+image' in this context means 'an icon with a label', not  
'an icon with a tooltip' --  I don't recall where icon+tooltip falls  
on the scale, but it's not at the top due to the greater interaction  
effort required to reveal tooltips.

Such research, indeed, was the basis on which our current default was  
chosen :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems