Re: [Usability] RFC: removing some colors from the panel...

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Rodney Dawes wrote:
> I think it's a bad idea. It won't really improve usability.  And

Hang on, why not explain the "it won't really improve usability" bit 
first? :-) Reducing unnecessary distraction is an improvement. 
<http://usabilityfirst.com/glossary/term_329.txl>

> what do you do for, say, the cpu/mem/net usage applet? Black on black
> isn't usable.

Neither is the applet in its current state, really: in its default 
settings it manages to be both visually distracting (thanks to the 
frequent updates, and the large black blob in your peripheral vision) 
and also difficult to read (because it uses a light-on-dark color scheme 
instead of a dark-on-light one).

> Grey on black wouldn't be any more usable either.

True, black on light grey would be much better. :-) (Though most demand 
for people to see, *at all times*, how much processor/memory/network/ 
swap space/load/disk they're using is probably a symptom of faults 
elsewhere.)

> And, then, when something important happens, you will have an odd mix of
> grayscale and color.

I don't find it odd when the icons in alerts (the other common result of 
something important happening) are colored, even though the rest of the 
controls in the alert are greyscale. Maybe it depends on what your 
definition of "important" is.

> Of course, the panel could just keep everything
> grayscale, too. But that kind of defeats the purpose of notifications.

Agreed. On OS X, the only time color is used is when the battery is just 
about to run out -- the indicator inside the battery icon turns slowly 
from black to red. Gnome's battery charge monitor uses color similarly, 
but unfortunately it's much less obvious because it's surrounded by 
other icons which are colored for much less important reasons.

> Of course, the fact that everything in the "panel" in Mac OS X is
> grayscale works for them. And it works for them, because they have
> total control over it.

If by "total control" you mean "control over those people who don't 
install MenuExtraEnabler", sure.

> There are no themes.

Actually, making the menu extras monochrome makes it easier to theme 
them to ensure they're always visible. (Or it would, if only Apple 
hadn't hard-coded the color of the Fast User Switching text. Oops.)
<http://resexcellence.com/themes/dsky/neos/05-24_NEOS_2.0_lg.jpg>

> They aren't notifications.

True, they're status indicators. Something as small as a panel isn't 
really big enough to provide understandable notifications. (Which is why 
Windows XP feels the need to use pop-up balloons to explain many of its 
attempts at notification icons. Argh.)

> They are meant to give you quick access to some application,

Most of them do, though that's not their primary purpose.

> and they all behave like menus. Because they all are menus, and they are
> in the menu bar.

It bugs me that some of the items in the Gnome panel are most useful 
with a left click, some are most useful with a left-button drag, some 
are most useful with a right-button drag, and others don't respond to 
the mouse at all. Make up your minds, people!

> Simply fading everything to grayscale in GTK+ will also probably confuse
> the user into thinking that the items are inaccessible.

I've just been through the entire collection of panel items available in 
Ubuntu 5.10, and the only items I find that to be true for are the Force 
Quit applet and Gaim's notification icon. Every other item has a 
completely black outline, so it would not be confused with a greyed-out 
item.

> What about the desktop? There are many more colors on my desktop, than
> there are on the panel, with all the documents, launchers, and
> thumbnails.

The desktop is also visible, on average, a lot less often. So how 
colorful it is doesn't matter nearly so much.

> ...
> "Apple does it" is good for thought, but shouldn't be the entire
> heuristic used in the design process.

Agreed. It's a shame that network effects (among other things) result in 
us having so few widely-used operating systems to compare with. If there 
were more, interface design would be much more advanced.

> They do just as many things for historic or technical reasons, as they
> do for usability ones.

Neither is true here. In more crackful days, Mac OS used to let you 
choose the color of the text in the menu bar clock. The Apple menu used 
to be multi-colored, and is still a different color from the rest of the 
menus. Also in OS X, the keyboard layout and battery status indicators 
both use color. So colored menu extras are neither historically 
unprecedented nor technically impossible; they're just used sparingly.

So perhaps the HIG could include the statement "Only use color in a 
panel icon if something urgently requires human attention". Then those 
in Gnome itself could be fixed to follow that guideline, and third party 
vendors would follow suit so that they didn't look out of place.

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/