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

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 17 May 2009, at 04:46, 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").

If you have a better word than "natural", feel free to add it to the  
bug report you already opened.  It was just the most concise way we  
could think of to say "alphabetical for words, ascending for numbers,  
chronological for dates, and whatever order might be applicable for  
lists that don't fall into any of those categories, like the checkbox  
column in a checkbox list, or the bug status column in a bug list".

> 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.

FWIW, when we wrote the guidelines, we did a straw poll specifically  
asking people which direction they thought represented 'increasing',  
and the majority said a downward pointing arrow, because that's the  
direction in which they read the list.

Personally, I'd be surprised if the vast majority of people ever  
noticed or cared which way the arrow was facing-- most people said  
they looked at the list itself for confirmation of the sort order, not  
the arrow.  But if it closes a bug, I'm happy to fix it the next time  
we're updating the HIG.

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems