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List:       kde
Subject:    Re: KDE - OK
From:       Peter Penz <peter.penz () jk ! uni-linz ! ac ! at>
Date:       1999-07-07 9:15:46
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Hi Derek!

Derek wrote:
> There is a visual cue between buttons and icons. Buttons are raised from
> their container, while icons are not. Therefore the user can see that a
> button is 'pressable', and if the standard is that one click means one
> press, users will follow that. Icons are not 'pressed', icons are
> 'selected' or 'activated' or something. The terminology is not
> important. What is important is that there is a difference between
> buttons and icons, and that the user has a visual cue between the two
> concepts. Of course, we must ensure that the concepts are used correctly
> by application developers.
I agree - there's no problem for users with buttons which look like
buttons (raised from their container, e. g. OK-Button, the
"One","Two","Three","Four"-Buttons), but in kpanel they look (!) exactly
like the icons in KFM.

> One of Microsoft's dopier ideas was the button which looks like an icon
> (ie flat) until you put the mouse on it when it suddenly pops up to look
> like a button (ie raised). What the hell was that about? What did the
> user interface gain? If anyone suggests KDE follows this idea I will
> consider it a personal and direct flame on me! ;)
Ups. Please (!) don't consider it as a flame, but the kpanel and every
toolbar of an application in KDE uses this MS-idea already (or did I
misunderstand your statement? I can't imagine, that you didn't notice
that ;-). A professor of the university Linz, which teaches "designing
human interfaces" likes this idea, but I know that most of GUI-designers
don't like it.

I (personally!) think, that it results in a more clearly arranged
toolbar. If you move over the "toolbar-icons", the raising gives the
user a feedback, that he can use this icons like buttons (similar to
web-pages, which use javascript for highlighting, like Markus said). 

Cheers,
Peter
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