Re: [Usability] HIG proposals are bad for PDA and small screen devices

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 9 Jan 2008, at 15:21, Stanislav Brabec wrote:

> Hallo.
>
> HIG conforming application must use 12 pixel spacing and ignore screen
> dimensions. It sounds broken by design.

It's a known issue, but the main 'broken-ness' is in gtk[1], which  
uses pixel units for everything, rather than a device-independent  
scheme.  Thus we had little choice but to write guidelines that  
assumed everyone was running on an average sized-screen with an  
average-sized font, and choose spacing guidelines accordingly.

That said, updating the guidelines with mobile devices in mind is  
definitely something we need to consider for the next release of the  
HIG.  It may be that a separate or supplementary document is more  
appropriate, though (as with the Java mobile device guidelines, the  
Windows CE guidelines etc.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] Or at least, it was when the HIG was written-- was this ever fixed?
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2003-February/msg00009.html

--
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