Re: [Usability] Rational for icons in button

["Ronny V. Vindenes" <s864 ii uib no>]

On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 18:42, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> From: Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandrakesoft com>
> > 
> > Hi, 
> > 
> > I'm having an argument with one of my co-workers on the "icon in button"
> > as used in GNOME (and never elsewhere, except maybe old Borland
> > programs). 
> > 
> > So, I was wondering what were the pros which led to use of icons in
> > buttons ?
> 
> probably something that some gtkhacker just did one day without thinking 
> about it. There has never really been a big usability discussion about it. 
> 
> > 
> > While I agree putting icon in every button would be silly (it can be
> > hard and sometime impossible to use an icon for every actions), I think
> > default actions should have their icons, which will ease recognition for
> > users (well, my co-worker has the opposite opinion..)
> 
> Well Calum, I and Greg have all argued that icons in some buttons and not in 
> other buttons make dialogs look not-professional. Notice how both the mac 
> and windows don't have icons in buttons. I don't think that the icons really 
> help in most cases anyway[1], and we should be encouraging devs to use more 
> action oriented terms for their button labels in dialogs anyway (While using 
> "ok" is acceptable, its better to use more descriptive terms save, download, 
> update for instance). 

IMHO, using "ok" is not at all acceptable, it's almost always used in a
context where "yes", "close" or a descriptive term (like "save" etc)
should be used instead.

As for icons in buttons, I feel they should be removed for a few
reasons. Firstly, a lot of buttons (like close, cancel, yes/no) have no
useful visual metaphors. Secondly, some icons may make perfect sense in
some parts of the world and none whatsoever in others (like latin
letters to indicate fonts).

Finally, as a matter of personal preference, I find that icons doesn't
make the desktop more colorful as much as it makes it more noisy. It
also forces themes to implement their own stock icons if they are to
appear consistent. Looking at http://art.gnome.org/ there are many good
themes, but few (none?) of them implement complete stock icon sets.

Perhaps the best solution would be if buttons didn't have icons by
default, but individual themes could specify them if they wished.

-- 
Ronny V. Vindenes <s864 ii uib no>