Greetings, > Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:24:54 -0500 > From: Christopher Schmidt <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons > > I disagree. I like the default OpenLayers icons, and always have. (And > am kind of tired of people acting as if any kind of visual design > decision is 'obviously wrong', as people seem to do with the OpenLayers > controls all the time.)
That's a silly attitude. If people complain about the OpenLayers controls all the time, then the problem is in the controls, not the people, and I fully agree with Zer that the some parts of current set are not intuitive and look amateurish. Compare with the icons over at our friends on Google: theirs are anti-aliased (ours aren't) and tastefully done in shades of white and gray (ours aren't). Specific usability points: * Still no tooltips for any of the controls! * We use the same [+] icon to mean three completely separate things: "zoom in", "switch map", "open minimap". The minimap should be changed to an diagonal arrow opening out (like Google), and the switch map control to a localized "Map" text button. * The mode-switching between "drag" and "select" tends to confuse the hell out of people using an OpenLayers map for the first time, especially since the mode is indicated only by changing the background color of the icon to a bizarre shade of light blue used nowhere else in the interface. Dragging a mouse with the button held down is not only unintuitive, but physically difficult for many people, especially the elderly. I would suggest doing away with it entirely as follows: - Default to drag mode. - Start selecting if the user single-clicks anywhere that's not a marker. - Clear selection and return to drag mode if user moves outside map area. - End selection and zoom if the user clicks again. Return to drag mode. This accomplishes the same, but is more obvious in function (the select box appears after an easy and common action), is much faster and easier for users (no need to manually toggle) and frees up screen space (no need for extra icons). And oh, if you think these are trivial and that our users are smarter than that, then go ahead, find your father/child/techno-illiterate significant other and ask them what each button in an OpenLayers map does. I'd add these to Trac, but due to some proxy weirdness I can't stay logged in at all... Cheers, -jani _______________________________________________ Users mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/users
