Re: [Usability] Text-editing widget, attempt 2

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt <inquata googlemail com>]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-07-21 at 10:59 -0500, Stéphane Maniaci wrote:
>> > "X" and "Y" make me think, "Horizontal" and "Vertical" much less so. You
>> > can avoid repetition by changing "Position" to "Offset".
>>
>> Thought about this, but do you think it's the same for the average
>> user ? I think X & Y might bring people back to school, correct me if
>> I'm wrong. Second remark, maybe having a long word next to the
>> spinbutton looks better than a single letter ?
>
> I'm not sure we understood each other here, so let me expand:
>
> Confronted with "X" and "Y", it costs me some mental effort to determine
> which way around the directions are. I have to bring up a mental picture
> of a graph and tend to remain unsure. I assume that I'm not alone with
> that.
>
> But if I read "Vertical" and "Horizontal", there's only a minimal
> translation effort to the referenced concepts.

For me, the mental effort for »X« and »Horizontal« is nearly the same.

What about making it even easier (& non-techy) by using »Top« and
»Left«? (Or »Top / Bottom« and »Left / Right« if you must, but that
overcomplicates it just for accuracy reasons).


> Of course showing it graphically beats even those labels. To keep the
> layout simple, you could use a vertical and a horizontal line with a dot
> on top/left and an arrow head on bottom/right in place of text labels
> (or perhaps in addition, if necessary for a11y).