Re: [HIG] proposed policy issues

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Adam Elman wrote:
> 
> At 4:58 PM -0700 10/24/01, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> >1) I suggest we strike the whole complicated View->Toolbars menu
> >setup. The Hide/Show Toolbar items can be in the View menu, since it
> >will be incredibly rare to have more than 3 toolbars, and the common
> >case is 1. The icons / text / both can be in the preferences menu or
> >the customize toolbars dialog.
> 
> I agree with this one.  You also suggested on IRC that we strike the
> specific Browser and Office toolbar recommendations, which I also
> agree with.  Calum, your comment?

I'm happy enough to simplify the View/Toolbar menu stuff, as long as we
still specify a consistent way of doing it.

Not quite so sure about losing the recommended toolbar layouts-- the
toolbar is about the most striking thing you see when you first start a
new app, and it's rather unsettling when it looks a bit different from
the others on your desktop for no particularly good reason.  One of the
things that makes the office suites work well together is the
consistency of their toolbar layouts, for example, I don't know how
happy I'd be to leave it all to the developer's whim.

I could be persuaded to leave out the more app-specific "Nautilus should
do this, Galeon should do this" type-stuff (although I know my boss
wouldn't be happy, that was his favourite part!) if we can come up with
a more general set of guidelines that would lead to much the same sort
of results, but I think we definitely need to say something on toolbar
button ordering and what users expect to see there.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems