Re: [Usability]question on multiple save as items

[Brian Bruns <camber ais org>]

On 14 Jan 2003, Calum Benson wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-01-14 at 16:54, Brian Bruns wrote:
> 
> > The toolbar is icon only
> 
> This is a potential issue in itself... if this is a GNOME app, it should
> respect the user's preference (set in the Menus & Toolbars Preferences
> window) for whether toolbars show icons, text or both.

Good point, that is actually on my todo list. I just haven't figured out 
how to it yet ;-)
 
> > , and has the Open, Save, and Save Results As... 
> > items on the toolbar (Save Query As... would be a lesser used function 
> > normally).
> 
> If it's "lesser used", you should probably ask yourself (or better
> still, your users) whether it's genuinely useful to have a toolbar
> button for it at all.  Toolbar buttons should only be provided for the
> most frequently used operations.

I should have been clearer, the "Save Results As..." is a common function 
and is on the toolbar, the "Save Query As..." is a lesser used option and 
isn't on the toolbar.  The problem is that now you have open/save/save as 
on the toolbar but "save as" doesn't refer to the same thing as the other 
two.
 
> If the answer is still "yes", then you probably really don't have much
> option but to design two distinct icons for the two "Save As" icons. 
> You'd probably want to somehow combine the standard "Save As" icon with
> symbols for "query" and "report" respectively... not being a database
> user I don't know if there are already common icons for those sorts of
> things though :/
>
> I haven't seen a screenshot of your app, but if the window is split into

http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/gmdb/gmdb2screenshot.png

In the lower right, although it had not included the save as icon at that 
point.

> two with the query at the top and the results at the bottom or
> something, another option might be to place the "Save Query" button near
> the query display, and the "Save Report" option near the report display,
> instead of having them both on the toolbar.  That way you might just
> about get away with using the same icon for both, but it kind of depends
> on the layout of the window and what else is on the toolbar.

It's a bit busy for my taste as is...I fear a different icon is my only 
viable option...anybody know of a good source for supplemental gnome2 
style icons?

> Cheeri,
> Calum.
> 

Thanks for the insight,

Brian