Re: Button stock icon sizes [urgent]

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2002 at 05:35:17PM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com> writes:
<snip> 
> > I think we could even just drop the "Ok/Cancel/Etc.." icons totally,
> > since I dont know if they really add anything to the usability. Though
> > one could ask the UI folks. But both windows and macos dont generally
> > have those.
> 
> Well, I hated them originally when GNOME added them, then eventually
> got used to them. I don't think they add much, but they probably don't
> hurt either. It's part of the "GNOME look" though, and anyways, I can't
> take themout of the API at this point.
> 
> We could add a configuration option as to whether to display them later.
>  
> Regards,
>                                              Owen


There is a precedent from NeXT for placing an image on the default button.

http://www.channelu.com/NeXT/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/UserInterface/05_Panel/Panel.htmld/index.html

The idea is to indicate that pressing the key marked with a down-then-left
arrow (i.e., Return or Enter) will activate the button with the same symbol.
I think it's also the only indication of a default button;
no ring-around-the-button is needed.

(Implicit in this is an argument against placing them on
 Druids/Wizards/Assistants/whatever, unless the right and left arrow keys
 will change pages too. Or perhaps that those are recognizable from
 browser navigation toolbars is either an argument for Alt+{Left/Right}
 bindings or an argument against a default looking like the key
 that activates it.)

Otherwise, icons on these buttons are bad.  Some argue that they provide
an extra cue and so afford not reading the button text, while others argue
that the time spent interpreting that extra cue is only time wasted.

Where there may be more buttons than provided by stock icons, the mix
of buttons with and without looks unprofessional at best and nauseatingly
unbalanced at worst.

I've yet to see a Cancel icon that didn't look like a Close icon. Because
of the abominable decision to place Close buttons on instant-apply windows,
we now have sets of windows with quite different modes of operation that
look very much alike. On the one hand there are OK/Cancel dialogs with
Cancel as the second button from the right showing a red X that will
ignore changes in the dialog (modulo Apply, if that's what was chosen).
On the other hand there are these things akin to Frankenstein's monster
which display a Close button showing a black X in the same place that
Windows puts a Cancel button, except they let changes made stand.

As for "GNOME look" arguments, well, icons on dialogs buttons aren't
unique to GNOME. I remember seeing them in Borland apps years ago.
I scantly recall reading recently that Borland was ridiculed for them.
Windows probably had them too, but I think they've grown out of that.

Now, who wants to think about removing them from menu items too?

Cheers,
Greg Merchan
-- 
Gratuitous mention of ICCCM and CUA to satisfy expectation.