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



On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 17:31 +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> 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".

I don't have a better word.  But I think the concept you are trying to
articulate is not significantly different from what is conventionally
referred to as a "gut feeling".  I suspect the fact that I can't come up
with a better term suggests something about the soundness of logic
underpinning the concept.  

> > 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.

Given the likelihood of sample bias, it seems to me that simply
conforming to the convention of other well-established and popular
desktop GUIs would have been preferable; but, water under the bridge.

I don't know exactly when said poll occurred; but I'm suspicious that
GTK+ was already doing "down arrow = ascending sort" at the time it
happened.  And I'm reasonably certain that Mozilla was doing it that
way.

Note that Mozilla has been fixed to conform to platform conventions for
the sort indicator.  (Which means "down arrow = ascending sort" for the
GTK+ build; "up arrow = ascending sort" for Mac and Windows.)

> 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.

Looking at the list isn't especially helpful when specifying a secondary
ordering.  For example, sorting threaded messages as oldest thread first
or newest thread first: if the threads are expanded, the next thread in
the list might not be visible.

For persons for whom the arrow is meaningless, certainly pointing one
direction or the other isn't going to make a bit of difference.
Hopefully it is clear that it is not on those persons' behalf that I
advocate this change.  I have seen enough traffic on bugs (particularly
the Mozilla ones) related to this issue over the last few years to be
convinced that there are quite a few users for whom the arrow is a
valuable visual cue.

>   But if it closes a bug, I'm happy to fix it the next time  
> we're updating the HIG.

Thank you.  Can you offer any estimate of the time frame for that?

-- 
Braden McDaniel <braden endoframe com>



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