For those who want to know more about this proposed change, here is a common rational for the arrow position in Windows, Mac, and the web:
v users perceive arrow as bigger on top so the list should contain the "biggest" items first (decreasing, e.g. reverse alpha, 10-1) ^ users perceive arrow as smaller on top so the list should be sorted by the "smallest" items first (increasing, e.g. alpha, 1-10) Also, the language "natural" order is very strange, does the GNOME HIG mean "logical" order? There should never be a table that isn't sorted in some way. Usually a good default is the first column is increasing by default unless there is a better column to sort by. On Saturday 16 May 2009 11:46:20 pm Braden McDaniel wrote: > GNOME's guideline for the sort direction indicator arrow is opposite the > prevailing convention on other popular platforms (Windows and Mac) and > many prominent Web sites (e.g., Yahoo! Mail, Google Docs). Furthermore, > the current recommendation in the HIG uses some vague language that's > too open to interpretation (specifically, a poorly defined notion of a > "natural order"). > > Fixing this is long overdue; it would be very nice if it could finally > happen for GNOME 3.0. If the will to do this is present, I'll be glad > to propose new language for the HIG. > > The language in question is here: > > > http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/controls-lists.html.en#contr >ols-lists-sortable > > I filed a bug on this some time ago: > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305277 -- Celeste Lyn Paul KDE Usability Project usability.kde.org _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
