Re: [Usability] label alignments



Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Do we have an official policy on label alignment?
>
> gnome-terminal prefs are like the second one right now, and some other
> things are like the first. I haven't looked to see which is the most
> popular.

I don't think we currently say anything on that in the draft HIG; it
should be in the Layout & Alignment section, but, er... it's not.  I'll
get onto it.

FWIW, I always recommend aligning the start of the labels rather than
the ends-- in general it makes it easier to scan a column of labels and
find the one you want more quickly.  Doing so also tends to leave you
with one less alignment point in your window with which to worry about
lining up other things.  And the fewer alignment points you have in a
window the better, generally speaking.

For example, in this dialog with three text fields and three checkboxes,
if you right-justify the text labels you end up with five alignment
points, three of which (2, 3 and 4) are crossed by other labels:

 (1)(2)    (3)4)     (5)
 |   |      | |       |
 |   | label1 [textbox]
 |  biglabel2 [textbox]
 biggerlabel3 [textbox]
 |   |      | |       |
 [x] checkbox |       |
 [x] anothercheckbox  |
 [ ] andanother       |
 |   |      | |       |


Whereas if you left-align the labels, you end up with only four
alignment points, and only two of them (2 and 3) are crossed by other
labels:
 
(1) (2)      (3)     (4)
 |   |        |       |
 label1       [textbox]
 biglabel2    [textbox]
 biggerlabel3 [textbox]
 |   |        |       |
 [x] checkbox |       |
 [x] anothercheckbox  |
 [ ] andanother       |
 |   |        |       |

Of course it's nice if you don't have to cross any alignment points at
all when you're designing a dialog, but it rarely works out like that 
:o)

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



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