On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 01:34:36PM -0400, Liam R E Quin wrote: > On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 18:36 +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote: > [...] > > My buttons however need something to differentiate groups of mutually > > exclusive options. > > Years ago, the "open look" approach would have been two-fold... > First, an exclusive-choice widget, most likely a drop-down list in > your example because of the relatively long text. Open look had > clearer guidelines on indicating exclusivity for buttons -- if you > could only make one choice, the buttons touched, with a straight border; > if you could make multiple selections they were further apart, with the > shaded/3d border applied individually.
I considered touching vs not touching for the difference, but that would mean not being able to do compact layouts with check-box-type options and it doesn't cover the case of radio options with stuff between them like the proxy config. > Second, choosing one of the options for your networking example would > change the set of visible controls in a single lower area, between the > choice and the cancel/reset/reset-to-factory/apply buttons. I thought about that briefly and my conclusion is that even the disabled widgets provide some information and that the connection between options and settings is most clear this way. > In your network example, though, maybe getting rid of the > Proxy Configuration / Advanced Configuration > distinction would be a useful start. There's no reason that > an advanced user would not need to configure a proxy and the > label gives no clue as to what's there, so probably most people > will feel they need to look at it, or that they should ask someone > else whether they are allowed in there. > > Really, your choices are, > Proxy: automatic / manual / not needed > > I imagine (hope) this is part of network profiles, so > the user can easily switch between being at home and at the office > and on the road, without losing settings or having to re-enter proxies > each evening. > > Typographically, the really ugly and heavy text input boxes most gtk > themes force upon us become the strongest element in any design, > so you should consider aligning the autoconfiguration box with the > others on the left. An unfortunate consequence of using indenting > to indicate the hierarchy is the variable distance between the labels > and the entry boxes - right-aligning at the colon would be the obvious > graphic-design fix, with putting the labels on the extreme right instead > of the left being a possible alternative. If you aligned the > Autoconfiguration URL properly, the silliness of the left-aligned > labels would be even more obvious, unfortunately. It's what you get > when engineers try to do graphic design :-) but OK I'll stop ranting. > > The upshot of all this is that I think the problem is not in fact > that there's no direct link between the radio buttons in > http://thorwil.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/net_proxy.png > but rather that you're using layout to indicate too many things > at once, and some of them are conflicting with each other. > > Try putting the 3 choices at the top, in a group, and all > the controls in a single group. The point of this exercise was applying my ideas to an existing dialog. Especially one that offers an interesting challenge, a case my concepts should better cover. So it would have been pointless to change the structure or any other aspect of the layout -- Thorsten Wilms Thorwil's Design for Free Software: http://thorwil.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
