Re: [Usability] close icon is misleading

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 15:27, Rodney Dawes wrote:

> How about "OK" or something similar? "Finished" maybe?

Hmm, I don't think we could use "OK"; the way things are right now, we
effectively use "OK" to indicate that a dialog is not instant apply, and
"Close" to indicate that it is.  Something like "Finished" or "Done" is
a possibility I guess, although it could feel slightly odd if you hadn't
actually made any changes before dismissing the window.

> Yes, but Windows nor MacOS have icons on the "Close" buttons.

That's true, I'd forgotten about the "X" icon on our Close buttons...
that adds to the confusion with the "X" button in the titlebar alright. 
There are still campaigns afoot to banish icons from dialog buttons
though so maybe that will solve that particular problem :)

> I know none of my machines have Floppy Disk drives anymore. My new
> laptop doesn't even have a CD-ROM drive.

Yep, changed times indeed.  I'd be more than happy to see us
experimenting with new icons for things like "Save" and the desktop
device icons (how many users know what the inside of a hard disk looks
like for goodness sake?), any takers? :)  

Longer term of course, you're right, it would be nice to be able to do
away with the notion of explicitly "saving" things at all... PDAs have
managed to do it quite happily for years.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems