Re: [Usability] List View Column Header Sorting

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Feb 25, 2007, at 9:54 PM, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 04:39:28PM +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
> > > I think changing the order of columns would be the best way to
> > > communicate the sequence of multiple sorting. All other ways I can
> > > think of require more complex graphics.
> >
> > That's assuming that displaying the secondary sort order is necessary.
> > I don't think it is (none of the software I've seen that supports
> > secondary sort displays it). And tying sort order to column order 
> > would be pretty annoying.
>
> The state of things should be communicated in a clear way, always.
> Every serious usability checklist will support that.

Just as much, usability guidelines talk about removing unnecessary 
visual elements for a simpler interface.

The Amiga Workbench used to display, at the top of the screen, the 
exact number of bytes free memory. That was always communicating the 
state of things in a clear way. But that doesn't mean it would be a 
good idea for Gnome.

> ...
> Why/How would tying sort order to column order be annoying?

For example, today I was looking through a folder with many subfolders. 
I wanted to trash those subfolders that were empty. To do that, I first 
clicked on the Size column twice to sort by smallest first. If sort 
order had been indicated by column order, my first click would have 
caused the Size column to jump over to the left, so my second click 
would have hit a completely different column (and caused *that* one to 
jump over to the left). Sorting by smallest first would have been 
annoyingly difficult, because I would have needed to click the same 
column in two different places.

> I think it is very natural to sort steps in a sequence, priorities,
> processing stages from left to right (well, reading direction for
> western world).
> ...

Natural for reading, perhaps, but not for manipulating.

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