Re: [Usability] [Fwd: Icon view navigation]

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 6 Jul 2005, at 10:30, Christian Neumair wrote:
> >

> > in an effort to fix bug 9930 [1], which complains that when pressing
> > right in the last icon column, the selection doesn't move to the next
> > row, first column, I've noticed that providing a good icon keynav  
> > isn't
> > trivial. Some observations/questions:
> >
> > * Users (including me) indeed tend to use the right/left key as  
> > "give me
> > next/prev. icon", where the list is read zig-zag, i.e. the nth  
> > row, last
> > icon preceeds the n+1th row, first icon
> > * When you have the first column/row focused and press left, would  
> > you
> > expect to be taken to the first row, last column? What about the last
> > icon in the view and the right key?
> > * Should the selection "wrap"? We currently select everything in the
> > matrix between and including the start icon of the selection and the
> > msot recently selected item, i.e. we have a selection pane, as if you
> > selected everything in between with the rubberband.
> >
> > The attached patch introduces the behavior described in the first  
> > two *.
> > Maybe an usability tester could point out other observations?
> >
> > [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99330

I don't have any usability data to suggest whether wrapping or not  
wrapping works better, but FWIW, neither Windows XP[1] nor OSX do any  
wrapping.  And they've probably done a lot more usability testing on  
this than we have...

If we were to implement some sort of wrapping anyway, I would say the  
most natural (for me as a user of a LTR locale-- I don't know how  
much of this is a cultural thing) would be for right-arrow to wrap to  
the first icon on the next row, and left-arrow to wrap to the last  
icon on the previous row.  This would primarily help contiguous  
selection from the keyboard, I think, although I suppose general  
navigation could benefit as a side-effect.

I wouldn't suggest wrapping around the ends though, partly because  
the selection use case doesn't really need it (unlikely that most  
contiguous selections would include items at both the start and end  
of the list), and partly for accessibility reasons (it's generally  
better for visually impaired users if things 'beep' when you try to  
move focus past their logical end).

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] Actually XP does in at least one corner case that I've  
encountered, but not in any useful or predictable fashion.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems