Re: [Usability] colon ':' in text field label

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 12 Aug 2008, at 16:04, Shaun McCance wrote:

> Actually, the HIG contains this very unfortunate recommendation:
>
>  Left-align components and labels, unless all the labels in a
>  group have very different lengths. If they do, right-align the
>  labels instead, to ensure that no controls end up too far away
>  from their corresponding labels.
>
> This is very internationalization-unfriendly advice, since labels
> might be wildly different lengths in different languages, yet the
> alignment will be set based solely on the lengths in English.


A perfect example of design by committee, unfortunately.  IIRC, some  
of us were arguing for left-alignment, and some of us were arguing for  
right-alignment, and we ended up just giving the classic UI designer's  
advice: "It depends".

(Which is perfectly valid advice as it's very often true, but unless  
you can usefully state what it depends on and why, it obviously  
doesn't make for a good guideline.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems