Re: [Usability] Rational for icons in button

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

On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 13:19, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 17:42, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> 
> > [1] What does an "x" have to do with cancel? what does the "Return" icon 
> > have to do with ok?
> 
> Well, the Return icon does have something to do with "OK"-- Return is
> usually the keyboard shortcut you press to activate it. I think it was
> the NeXT machines that originally did this, but I forget... Softwood's
> FinalCopy/Writer/Calc on the Amiga certainly did though :)

Yes, NeXT certainly did this (and I think Softwood even copied the exact
icon in their products hehe). 

> This may or may not be a nice thing do even if we do banish all other
> icons from buttons.  But of course currently we don't dynamically place
> the Return icon on whatever the default button happens to be, so as it
> stands it's just another example of one of those things where we
> borrowed the look from another desktop but forgot to borrow the actual
> functionality that made it useful :/

It's worse, we have the return icon and we have half the functionality,
since widgets can indicate that they have focus. So a dialog with OK and
Cancel has the return icon on the OK button but the Cancel button is
indicated to have focus and thus being the default action if pressing
return.

If the Cancel button also has a "lucky red" icon, I'm starting to
understand why people new to computers find it all so confusing.

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