Re: replacement for GtkImageMenuItem

[Stefan Salewski <mail ssalewski de>]

On Sun, 2014-03-23 at 13:45 +0000, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> there are various reasons to move away from images inside menu items,
> except for something fairly specific like "noun" menu items (e.g.
> bookmarks to web pages, or files) instead of putting an icon
> everywhere. there are various scientific studies that lend weight to
> the fact that users do not actually use images to recognize items, and
> that words hold a better usability. a quick summary with links can be
> found here:
>
> http://uxmyths.com/post/715009009/myth-icons-enhance-usability
>
> again, the Human Interface Guidelines for menus I linked in my email
> explains why and where you should use images in menu items.
>
> > For example, how can I be sure that all the images will be aligned,
> same
> > width, etc with all menuitems?
>
> using the GtkBox and GtkWidget alignment details, like with everything
> else dealing with boxes.
>
> I think you're grossly overestimating what GtkImageMenuItem does: all
> it does is just placing two items inside an horizontal container.

Thank you very much for that explanation.
Indeed I was wondering myself when porting an application
(http://ssalewski.de/PetEd.html.en) to GTK3 about warnings about
deprecated images in Buttons, Menus...

Personally I do not really miss that images, indeed my personal feeling
is that usability is better with only text. But on the other hand I
found it convenient to have a simple function call for generating  a
menu item or button with a nice default images -- which the user can
deactivate. (Generally I try to follow the recommendations of GUI
developers and user settings, and I do not intend to use additional code
to modify (hack) the default look). Now when images are deprecated in
the long term we will get GTK GUI's with less images. OK for me. But is
it OK for smart-phone kids? Well, if other operating systems will reduce
images also, they may accept it.

Best regards,

Stefan Salewski