Re: [Usability] HIG: Fixing the sort arrow direction guideline

[Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste kde org>]

For those who want to know more about this proposed change, here is a common 
rational for the arrow position in Windows, Mac, and the web:

v users perceive arrow as bigger on top so the list should contain the 
"biggest" items first (decreasing, e.g. reverse alpha, 10-1)

^ users perceive arrow as smaller on top so the list should be sorted by the 
"smallest" items first (increasing, e.g. alpha, 1-10)

Also, the language "natural" order is very strange, does the GNOME HIG mean 
"logical" order? There should never be a table that isn't sorted in some way. 
Usually a good default is the first column is increasing by default unless 
there is a better column to sort by.

On Saturday 16 May 2009 11:46:20 pm Braden McDaniel wrote:
> GNOME's guideline for the sort direction indicator arrow is opposite the
> prevailing convention on other popular platforms (Windows and Mac) and
> many prominent Web sites (e.g., Yahoo! Mail, Google Docs).  Furthermore,
> the current recommendation in the HIG uses some vague language that's
> too open to interpretation (specifically, a poorly defined notion of a
> "natural order").
>
> Fixing this is long overdue; it would be very nice if it could finally
> happen for GNOME 3.0.  If the will to do this is present, I'll be glad
> to propose new language for the HIG.
>
> The language in question is here:
>
>        
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/controls-lists.html.en#contr
>ols-lists-sortable
>
> I filed a bug on this some time ago:
>
>         http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305277

-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org