Re: [Usability] Ellipsis on buttons

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 17:51 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
--- Shaun McCance <shaunm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 14:50 +0000, Alan Horkan
wrote:

Developers should be slapped for not properly
labelling things.
(Reading documentation to find out what things do
should be an option not
a necessity.)


Oh, come now. We use iconography for all sorts of
purposes
in our interfaces. Should drop-down menus remove
their arrows
in favor of a "Select" label? Should disclosure
triangles be
removed in favor of "Open/close group" buttons?

This need to label everything gives us bulky and
cumbersome
interfaces. One reason Mac interfaces often feel
slick and
efficient is that Apple isn't afraid to use their
icons.

I'm taking a wander through some of the dialogs on my
mac...
The non-labelled buttons I see are:

Little round '?' for help in dialogs
+ and - to add and remove items in a list (eg list of
printers)

These are largely what I was referring to, as well as
some of the icons in iTunes:

http://kwc.org/blog/archives/desktop.itunes.jpg

Although I think iTunes tends too much towards not
having labels. I'm a big fan of using iconography
(not necessarily just image icons, but more generally
symbols that represent things) for common and standard
operations.

The Help button is a perfect example. Because Apple
uses the single ? icon very effectively, they can put
it almost anywhere in an interface. Add and Remove
are also good examples. Whenever we use them, they
end up feeling awkward, occupying a disproportionately
large amount of space that ought to be used to display
more data.

We have a love affair with icons alongside text, but
we're afraid to let them stand on their own. We even
default to icons+text toolbars.

--
Shaun


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