Re: [Usability] Zoom Controls

[Diego Moya <turingt gmail com>]

On 21 April 2010 22:46, Allan Day wrote:
> I'm still not entirely sure about the practical benefits of sliders, but
> they may have non-practical advantages: they can look nice, and I
> suspect people like them as something that they can play with. They can
> be a nice change from the usual kinds of widgets you encounter.

You kidding?? Sliders is the only practical way to achieve a desired
exact zoom level. Every other control has fixed size increments, while
sliders have continuous zoom with instant feedback. This is not just
'nice to have', is a killer feature.

I personally consider every zooming interface that lacks a slider a
failure, unless one of these conditions is present:

- the application only supports semantic zooming, so there aren't any
intermediate continuous levels.
- the zooming range is too narrow for a slider to matter - a few
clicks can get you through maximum to minimum.
- there's too few space available for a slider to fit in the interface
and thus exact refinement must be sacrificed.