[Usability] Removing icons from buttons?

[Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 08:08, Calum Benson wrote:
> 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. 

I couldn't agree more.  I cringe every time I see one of those ugly
dialogs (typically questions, like "do you want to save?") where some of
the buttons have icons, and some of them don't.

> 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).

Even aside from the themability, making an icon is a *huge* effort.  You
don't really want to spend time designing icons for each and every
dialog, especially when they are one-time confirmations that get
triggered only once in a while.  (99% of the programmers don't even know
how to draw an icon anyways...)

> 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...

Indeed.  And since the consistency problem is not really fixable (there
are always going to be buttons that don't have an icon, for the reasons
you outlined), we have to either give up the button icons altogether or
live with the consistency problem...

I'd rather happily go for the former.  ;-)

-- Ettore