[Usability]Eugenia's UI review/mockup

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

Eugenia wrote a constructive article nitpicking on some UI issues on
RedHat/GNOME/Gtk:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1495

While I don't agree with some of this points (smaller text? uargh) and
some of this are specific problems of this RedHat tool, some points
probably should be discussed/improved.

1.) The "help" and "close" buttons in the theme preferences aren't
aligned with the group border (or tab border as in the RedHat version).
All other preferences tools do align them. Should be very very easy to
change. :)

2.) "Go to theme folder" was suggested to be "Open theme folder". What
do you think? It seems to make sense as this button indeed opens a new
view/folder and not directly goes to it. Also it's shorter (in
wordcount).

3.) She suggests different (in brightness) colors for elements like
buttons or childviews (groups, etc). I don't know if this is technically
possible in a theme but basically I like this suggestion (it has
certainly usability advantages and also looks quite nice). 

4.) Bold font for group headers? I really like this suggestion, what do
you think? This would make groups probably much more noticable (and
easier to group the elements in your mind as there is more visual
separation). 

5.) I might also add that she believes in different font sizes for
certain elements, like fontsize+1 for buttons but I'm _strongly_ against
this as there is a reason why I choose a certain fontsize and I don't
want it to be changed for anything... I'm not so sure if this is just
me.


Well, that's it. I don't find the other points to be particulary
usefull, but that's just my humble opinion.
BTW, is visual design still part of usability (even if it's only about
looking good)? If not, what do you think about a mailinglist about this
topic? I'm not talking about the art-stuff like icons or themes but the
visual quality of button layouts, applications, panels, etc. I'm very
interested in this kind of stuff but don't want to flood the usability
mailinglist with those discussions if it's offtopic.


- Daniel