Re: [Usability] List View Column Header Sorting

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 10:46:59PM +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> > 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.

How could indication of secondary (or higher) sorting be unnecessary 
without it also being unnecessary for primary sorting, since you 
can determine the sorting from the results?

The headers provide context, it should be complete.


> > 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.

That's a very valid concern, thank you.
I will revisit other means to indicate multiple sort (which should 
also improve discoverability).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms