Re: [Usability]"widget"

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

On 30 Jul 2002 Mark Nelson wrote: 

> Why Havoc?  It was already stated that in "Human Computer Interaction"
> the word defines the elemenets of the WIMP interface.  If it's good
> enough for them, why is it not good enough for us?  I really do want to
> know actually.  Is it just that you don't like the word because you
> think it's silly or unprofessional?  It really seems that this is why
> most people here don't like it, even if they try to hide that reason
> behind a thousand different arguements.  What does this really come down
> to?
> 

"Controls" is fine as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary. "Widget" 
isn't. The AHD is the language reference we are using for GNOME. Everything else 
is just personal opinion. There is no need for this discussion. 

> Personally, I'm against using the word "control", but don't think that
> we necessarily need to use the word "widget" either.  Here are my
> reasons why:
> 
> From my personal experience, I've never that I can remember heard anyone
> refer to things like dialog boxes, toolbars, status bars, or text entry
> boxes as controls.  I have occasionally heard scrollbars and buttons
> refered to as controls, though mostly by certain people in the
> gnome/mozilla community.  This seems to be true for a lot of other
> people on the list as well.  "Control" is a very strong and descriptive
> noun, and it doesn't fit for many widgets such as some of those listed
> above.  
> 
> The next problem I have with it is that it's traditionally been used in
> association with setting system preferences.  The Windows Control Panel,
> Gnome's Control Center, Kde's Control Center, MacOS's Control Panels,
> etc.  If the word control didn't already have a fairly specific
> assosiation, it may have been an ok (though not perfect as noted above)
> name for these objects.  Given that it does have a previous assosiation,
> and how widely it is used, I think it would cause users (and
> specifically new users) a lot of confusion.  What is the difference
> between a "control panel", a "control", and a "system preference".  The
> first two sound like they should do the same thing, but they don't.  In
> reality the first and the third do the same thing.  Unforutately, the
> name "control panel" has been so ingrained by MacOS and Windows over the
> last 10-15 years, that it's not going to go away anytime soon (though
> apple seems to be trying).  
> 
> The word "widget" doesn't really have this problem as it's already used
> by many people to mean the objects we are talking about.  It has no
> other strong assosiation, and won't be confused to mean something else. 
> It also doesn't suffer from the first problem quite as dramatically as
> "control" does.  "Control" implies that the element can be controlled
> (which may or may not be true), while widget doesn't have nearly so
> strong a correlation.  
> 
> If widget really just sounds too jargon-like, or unprofessional to some
> of the developers here, why not simply use "window elements" or
> something similar?  It's descriptive, isn't really jargon-like, and
> shouldn't be as confusing. I don't really understand why people are so
> incredibly set on using "control" when it doesn't even accurately
> describe all of the things we are talking about.  What exactly am I
> missing?
> 
> Mark Nelson
> 
> On Tue, 2002-07-30 at 11:01, usability-request gnome org wrote:
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> > Today's Topics:
> > 
> >    1. "widget" (Havoc Pennington)
> > 
> > --__--__--
> > 
> > Message: 1
> > To: usability gnome org
> > From: Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>
> > Date: 30 Jul 2002 11:56:17 -0400
> > Subject: [Usability]"widget"
> > 
> > 
> > Guys, sheesh. We are not putting the word "widget" in the UI.  It's
> > not even worth discussing. This thread is way too long.
> > 
> > Havoc
> > 
> > 
> > --__--__--
> > 
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