On 24.04.2015 23:40, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> Consider a button that toggles between 'stop' and 'play'. Does
> it show the current state of the player, or the one you get
> when you click on it ?
Yes, a classic. It's the general problem that using any toggle-action
successfully requires the user to be aware of the current state. That
might sound like a non-issue seen in isolation, but if a user has to
deal with lots of such states over a long period of time, mistakes will
happen. At the very least frustrating double and triple triggering.
The reason to use one toggle button over 2 action buttons is saving
space. Likewise, one shortcut over 2 shortcuts. A DAW can get away with
Play/Pause toggling, but less often changed states that affect other
actions are more troublesome as toggle.
I mean to recall that Rhino3D has buttons that will always enable / keep
enabled something on left click and will always disable / keep disabled
on right click.
Regarding ambiguous icons on toggle buttons that might display either
state or action: If you can't avoid them, didn't find icons that imply
action or state, the last line of defense is convention. Always state or
always action.
> Similar situation with 'slider switches'
> which show 'on' or 'off' on the flat part. If you have no other
> feedback, the state of the button or slider gives you a very
> ambiguous hint at best.
The blind copying of Apple's sliding switches is one of the saddest
things to happen in recent GUI design.
I for one can't take anyone serious who thinks this is acceptable:
https://afaikblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/date-and-time.png
If one wanted to infer a guideline from that screenshot, it could be:
"Make sure there is a huge gap between labels and associated widgets.
This slows the user down to avoid stress and gives his eyeballs a nice
workout." We already know a solution since decades. Checkboxes with
their identifying graphics on the left side. Taking touch into account
should not mess up pointer-based use. If you can't make sure of that,
maybe a hybrid is a bad idea?
-- Thorsten Wilms thorwil's design for free software: http://thorwil.wordpress.com/ _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@email-addr-hidden http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-devReceived on Sat Apr 25 12:15:02 2015
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