Re: [Usability] Re: close icon is misleading

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 08:22, Maxwell Terpstra wrote:
> I strongly believe that removing the icon entirely is a step in the wrong direction. Icons are generally interpreted much faster and more fully than text, and thus make dialogues much easier to use.
> The problem is finding an appropriate icon that will be interpreted
> correctly. Because icons are recognized faster than text, their
> meaning often governs, and may even override the meaning of
> accompianing text, rather than the other way around.
> The text is fine as it is. It's the icon that's the problem - it's being interpreted as "kill" or "delete," rather than simply "I'm done with you."

The main issue right now is that there are loads of buttons in dialogs
that don't have icons, and for which there is no appropriate icon
anyway, and these just make the desktop look sloppy and unpolished. 
Where we do have them, they can be somewhat confusing, e.g. the Close
and Cancel icons are virtually identical as you and others have pointed
out.

IIRC it's also a bit of extra effort to make the icons on 'custom'
buttons themable, so some people haven't bothered, which compounds the
problem.  (Not sure if this is still an issue or not).

At the end of the day, if they're really so useful, you have to ask
yourself why no other major desktop bothers to use them...

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