Hello, I was very happy to see the HIG released, congratulations! While I've not written any GNOME software, in my former life I used to write desktop applications, and can certainly appreciate the importance of good user interface standards, and even more so, readable guidelines and references to those! I'm currently reading through the HIG, primarily out of curiosity regarding the standards being set for the future of my preferred desktop platform. Now, I do have some questions, suggestions and criticism to offer, as well, so I might just as well get on with it, right? ;) My apologies if these are repeats or rejected ideas, since I can't go through all archives.. Chapter 2, menu items and tooltips I think it would be useful to repeat the recommended menu item texts (in examples 2.2, 2.3, 2.5) in the tooltip example 2.7, simply to drive the point home. For example, since you recommend that "Gnome Batalla Naval Client" should be called "Batalla Naval" in the menu, the 2.7 example should say menu item tooltip Batalla Naval Find and sink enemy ships in this networked... Chapter 3, alerts Recommending no titles in alerts means that the user has no clues to see what application is giving the alert. The alert example 3.11 might be coming from Evolution Calendar, but how do I know that? This is even more critical in situations where the alert requires the user to make a decision or otherwise perform an action with a possibly running application (consider that Evolution might not even be running (have a window open), since the alert might come from the background evolution-alarm-notify). Of course, for example 3.15 you point out the possibility of a convenience button for further action, but that is not necessarily always enough. spacing and positioning The guideline states spacing requirements in pixels. I'm disappointed to see this mistake repeated in yet one more guideline! This design method has been invalid for at least the past 10 years, and it is even more so now. Display resolutions can vary greatly, and UI sizes need to adapt. One user might be using a font size of 10 pixels, while another needs 24 to keep the text comfortably readable (I wish _I_ had a 200 dpi screen so that I could require 24 point fonts - and I intend to, in not very many years from now). Gnome has supported resizable icons and mostly resizable UIs beautifully for a long time. The spacing guidelines should, as well, by stating distances relative to font size instead of pixels. In fact, the more I look at the example, the more it seems to be self-conflicting! For example, the guideline says that the space between the buttons is 6 pixels, when it clearly is 11 in the example picture! In the that picture, the alert window spacings could clearly be restated in terms of font height (apparently Verdana 12?) or "em" size (average glyph width (around 8 pixels for this font), using 1, 1.5 or 2 times the height or em size. Well, it's getting late, so I guess I'll be continuing later. Again, thanks for your work! //oa
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part