Re: [Usability] label alignments

[Brian Crescimanno <darksheer fotographix com>]

I find the right-aligned labels far easier to use than the left aligned
labels.  They seem to provide a much better "feel" to the dialog. 
There's no "big gap" that your eyes have to wander across to get from
the label to the interactive field (textbox, checkbox, etc.)

B

On Mon, 2002-02-11 at 14:12, Gregory Merchan wrote:
    On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 06:29:25PM +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
    > 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.
    <snip>
    
    We have a mix. Some graphics show everything left-aligned but the text
    in the layout section says labels should be to an immediate side.
    
    I don't know if this can be decided absolutely. I have a book that
    recommends:
    
        Left-justify the labels and the fields separately: [...] This style
        works best in two situations:
          1. When the data in the fields don't align well -- for example
             when some fields contain left-justified alphanumeric characters
             and others contain decimal aligned numbers.
          2. When the window has a mixture of input and protected (view-only)
             fields. Since protected fields don't have text-entry boxes, you
             can only align the labels.
    
        Right-justify the labels and left-justify the fields: This style
        works well when the data themselves are aligned (all alphanumeric
        or all decimal) or when the field edges are obvious.
    
    Obviously, this is an old book. :-)  But I think a recommendation for
    which to use when is best. Perhaps there's a web form design guide that
    has such?
    
    I seem to recall some discussion about this on HIG list. The Java HIG
    recommends what I snipped, but I think the rough consensus on the list was
    to keep labels and fields together.
    
    Maybe this image is helpful:
      http://www.phys.lsu.edu/students/merchan/shots/label-alignments.jpg
    
    
    Cheers,
    Greg Merchan
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