Re: [Usability] Ellipsis on buttons

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Mar 23, 2006, at 5:13 PM, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> ...
> > > I think having a stock label for "Browse..." might help encourage 
> > > developers not to cut corners 
> > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158009
> >
> > I think for the keyboard model button, "Choose..." might be better. 
> > But maybe that's because I associate "Browse..." with something 
> > involving a file.
>
> Fair enough but as you know I'm big on consistency and that other
> operating system uses that term as do a million widgets on web pages.

That's a poor choice by Microsoft and by the Gecko developers, not by 
Web authors (who can't override the wording of <input type="file"> even 
if they want to). In WebKit, on the other hand, <input type=file"> is 
rendered as a "Choose File" button, followed by the icon and name of 
the selected file. (In an ironic twist since this discussion started 
with ellipses, Apple clumsily forgot the ellipsis in "Choose File...".)

Browsing is not a goal, unless you're a cow. The goal is choosing a 
file, so that's how the button should be labelled. I'm not sure a stock 
"Choose File..." label would be a good idea, though, because the most 
appropriate label can vary. A compact background configuration 
interface, for example, might have a menu for selecting colors followed 
by a "Choose Image..." button. A scene properties window for a video 
might have a "Choose Soundtrack..." button. Where the button follows a 
list of existing files, "Choose Another..." may be most appropriate. 
And so on.

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