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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Defaulting to "Icons on Buttons"
From:       Fred Schaettgen <kde.sch () ttgen ! net>
Date:       2005-09-03 15:58:20
Message-ID: 200509031758.20783.kde.sch () ttgen ! net
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On Friday, 2. September 2005 20:17, tackat@t-online.de wrote:
> Am Freitag, 2. September 2005 18:29 schrieb Stephan Binner:
> > Hello,
>
> some discussion showed that people say this setting is not turned on
> by default only for now historic reasons. Opinions on turning it on in
> 3.5?
>
> You are asking on the wrong mailing list. This is a topic for
> kde-artists@kde.org as well as kde-usability@kde.org.

This thread started with the question if icons on buttons should be enabled or 
not, but soon the same question was asked for icons in menus and discussion 
started about what the icons are actually good for.

These are the arguments brought up in that thread on core-devel so far:

1) Icons were said to make it easier to identify an item (button or menu).
2) Nobody could present numbers if (1) is true and if yes under what 
circumstances.
2) Icons in menus and on buttons increase visual clutter.
3) Icons make it easier to recognize actions presented in the toolbar with an 
icon only and thus help users becoming more efficient.
4) Icons can be used to color code actions, details don't matter that much.
5) Icons everywhere can make the GUI somewhat language neutral. 
6) An icon used for different actions may be worse than no icon
7) Small icons must be handcrafted, because SVGs don't scale down to small 
sizes very well
8) Automatically scaled down icons can still be better than no icons
9) 16x16 might become obsoleted in the future by high dpi displays, but that 
won't be too soon.
10) Icons on buttons need more space.
11) Small icons are hard to make and hard to understand.
12) Small icons help identifying similar actions even if you don't know what 
the icon is supposed to depict.
13) ...

So there are several arguments which are mutually exclusive:
- clutter vs. additional hints
- easy interpretation ("ah, a back arrow") vs. easy association ("ah, I know 
that from the toolbar"):
http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/KDE/kdelibs/pics/crystalsvg/cr16-action-back.png?rev=409203
http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/KDE/kdelibs/pics/crystalsvg/cr22-action-back.png?rev=409203
- single SVG icon source vs. good look for all sizes

Disallowing icons completely for menus and buttons is clearly no option.
Putting icons everywhere also doesn't seem to make sense. So the truth must 
lay in between. 
Where should we draw the line in the KDE HIG? 
When is it appropriate to use an icon on buttons and menu items?
When is it clearly not appropriate?
To what extend can icons be reused for different actions? 
Should all sizes look the same? 


Fred

-- 
Fred Schaettgen
kde.sch@ttgen.net
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