>I don't see any advantage over the current layout. Why should we replace > buttons by links? Buttons are way more obvious UI elements. You have to > hover text to releveal that it is a link. >If you are bound to use the keyboard anyway, isn't a simple ctrl-l > reasonable?
Well, as for your points, Christian: You're right, the improvement over the current situation isn't big, but it's there. The widget has the same functionality as the button pathbar _and_ the locationbar combined. And furthermore it is discoverable as both. > Only on a minority of pages that are very badly designed. People > "shouldn't have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can > click" <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html>. > > > Advanced users could go a step further and edit the text directly, > > It would be rather annoying trying to edit text where clicking on the > part you wanted to change opened another folder. I disagree with the first point, Matthew, and _do_ say that those links in the entry widget are highly discoverable (just by hovering over them you notice they are links and the arrows tell you it's not a simple text entry) and that furthermore on webpages links don't have to be underlined by default but distinguished by color. It is very good though to have a prelight state of links to tell the user that this is an active element. Anyways: Your second point is very valid, and might cause some troubles. Still with the feedback of a changing color and/or an underline users will notice that it's not editable that easily. It must however be possible to change a letter within those folder names. Therefore one should be able to place the cursor at the arrows. There should be no links. This already also leads to Calum's remarks: > to think about... it's easy to navigate a row of buttons in the > standard way using Tab (and Space to activate), but how would you > navigate and activate a list of hyperlinks in a text field? After reading your email I've thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that the behaviour of text entries as is right now actually is enough to navigate. The Folder where the cursor is is always underline/colored and can be activated by pressing enter. This should easily be discoverable through the underline. Using Ctrl+RIGHT/LEFT navigates to the beginning of the next/previous folder. Ctrl+DEL/BACKSPACE will delete one whole part of the path. There was something else I wanted to mention, but I forgot... Take care! David _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
