Re: [Usability] Gnome HIG suggestion: search box clear buttons

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 10:14 +0200, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 02.06.2007, 10:59 +0100 schrieb Phil Bull:
> > I suppose another reason to have a clear button is to provide some
> > feedback that search terms have been entered and that a search is
> > currently active - I've lost count of the times that I've been looking
> > for an item in a list, only to realise that I'd entered some search
> > terms earlier and had to go and clear them to look again.
[...]


> That is why the search entry of Rhythmbox changes its background color
> when a search is active. I also did the same for the latest
> gnome-app-install in Ubuntu Gutsy and it helps a lot.

Evolution does this too, although it's actually buggy enough to be
a hindrance.  The problem is the same for the "location bar" of a
Web browser - the text field is overloaded to mean (1) this is what
you are seeing, and (2) this is where you type a command to go or
see something else.  So there are times when the text field does
not reflect what you are seeing:
(a) when you're editing it
(b) when the computer is processing (blinking lights and turning
    gears and emitting smoke) and hasn't got there yet
In addition with Web browsers, often the Web page redirects,
and the text field is updated by the browser, so that it can
reflect something that you didn't type, and that might also
not be what's displayed (e.g. javascript change to .location)
Go to a Web page, so that the URL is displayed, then type in
 http://www.useableporndevices.com/ and take a screenshot,
or ask yourself what the reload button should do.

So to get back to the search field, it's the same problem,
except that I think most software won't update the contents
of the search field.  But you have the case that what's
displayed in the field doesn't always reflect what's actually
presented, and the user's model and the computer's model are
in inconsistent states.

Now, in an editor, it's become customary to put a * in the title
bar of the window when a file is modified, so that you might guess
that what you're seeing isn't actually the current contents of
the named file.

In some of the earlier Web browsers, there were separate "this is the
current Location" and "go here please" fields, but it used too much
of that precious screen space, plus in most toolkits of the time,
labels were not selectable, and people wanted to copy and paste URIs,
or URLs as they were then called.

So what's needed is a visual indication of when the display doesn't
match the label, or of the distinction between "The Computer is
telling you something, but you can change it" and "you're telling
me something"

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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