Martin Smat wrote:
Marc Weustink wrote:
Hi,
Just tonight I noticed that the Icons in front of menuitems have a lot
of whitespace on the left. I wondered why and expected some bug.
However when I saw a menuitem with checkmark it became clear. The
checkmark is drawn in front of the icon.
This behaviour is not something windows and IMO ugly.
XP itself doesn't show much icons and still uses checks and bullits.
On menus where they are mixed, they are drawn in the same location.
Most other apps I saw, when having menuitems with icons, the
checkmarks aren't drawn anymore. The icon is drawn Sunken or with some
"highlight" to indicate it is checked. (compere it with a flat check
toolbutton in down state)
On the other hand I can write here some other applications using the
same design as Lazarus (e.g. NetBeans, Eclipse, ...). I agree that most
applications now still use the model you described but I don't like it
because it does not seem to me well-designed.
I don't agree. the examples you describe are all cross platform / have
their own environment, while Lazarus tries to keep a native OS look.
From the first view of the current situation there is IMO way to mych
whitespace. My first impression was not very positive (and this
impression usually implies my idea how well an app is desinged (*)
1. if the application uses sunken icon for checked menuitems, you can
often very hardly say if it is checked or not.
Indeed, sunken only is hard to see. The cases I saw also highlight the
background with a lighther color. However with the current design of
windows apps the 3D effect is a bit passe. You now see a more flat approach.
Like the last 2 liks I gave:
http://www.dommelstein.nl/scrap/menu_image_check2.png
http://www.dommelstein.nl/scrap/menu_image_check3.png
Even when you look at the menu design of Vista, you'll notice the lack
of icons. You see only the traditional checks. I found one screenshot,
using the same flat images:
http://techrepublic.com.com/2300-10877_11-6043696-55.html
2. if the checkmark is drawn instead of the icon then you loose the very
useful mnemonic help telling you what each menu item means. It is very
helpful for beginners and also for people whose native language is
different from the language used in the application. They are often
orientating themselves only on the icons.
I think this is always a matter a choice which design is better and more
useful but if there will be more people complaining of the current
design (which is used in Lazarus already since 0.9.15), I'm ready to
rewrite it to the old design.
That it is the case since 0.15 doesn't matter to me. I noticed it now. I
don't update my win32 laz that often, since try to work with it and
prefer a working version.
I don't propose to go back to the old situation. What I propose is to
get images and checks back to one column again.
If an checkitem has no image and is checked, it can be drawn like the
way I showed, with a clHighLight bordercolor and a lighter variant of it
as background. In the middle a check is drawn. The occupied square of
the border is the same size as is occupied by item icons (20x20 ?)
If the checkitem has an image, it is op to the designer of the interface
to provide a good (or 2 good) images which reflect the state. The
background area and the border have to be clearly visible.
(I'm not really pro large icons).
Maybe to give it some accent, the image column of the menu can be drawn
in a bit darker color.
Marc
(*) IMO The design of the userinterface reflects the design of the whole
app, it shows with how much precision/care a developer designed his
piece of software. When I test an app where the UI is disorderly (and i
think huge white gaps are), I expect the code behind in not being
better. For the many years I've tried 3rd party tools, it hasn't proven
otherwise.
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