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On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 03:23:42, Roger Larsson wrote:
> * Tooltips - let the mouse be over the icon for a while and you get: "Up"

That still isn't a meaningful, at a glance, description of what to expect, but 
even 'up' doesn't mean much at all.

Why not just let people know straight away if you can? Tooltips are a good, 
but secondary, means for providing information on various things. People have 
to have some idea of what a widget does before they view a tooltip, but no 
real specifics. Text under icons is a great way of doing that. It isn't 
always practical, where space and the number of buttons, such as in a word 
processor, get in the way, but it is certainly practical in something like a 
web browser.

However, it is the size of the buttons that is, perhaps, the big issue. When 
you have a lot of well used buttons, such as backwards and forwards in a web 
browser, you need to have them of a reasonable size. The more people use 
them, the more they have to concentrate to make sure they get their cursor in 
the area of the button when they click. It sounds silly, especially to a 
developer, but it is one of those subconscious things that really matters.

It's Fitts' Law. I really hate laws, because they make things sound more 
complex than they really are. In layman's language, basically, that just 
means that the bigger an object (icon, toolbar etc.) is, and the shorter the 
distance a user can get to it, the more comfortable a user is about finding 
the target and hitting it. This is subconscious a lot of the time, but 
annoying if it doesn't work, and the law really does apply to objects and 
functions that are used often. Buttons in a web browser is certainly one that 
qualifies.

I did a small bit of googling, and this was the first page that came up:

http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

Look at the first question, but the rest are equally good. Also remember that 
Microsoft did not invent text under icons, just like they didn't invent the 
web browser :).

> What is this - use the little questionmark in window border (next to
> minimize) 

Again, people have to complete three or four steps just to have any idea of 
what something is. People only use tooltips or "What Is" when they have some 
idea of what something does, but they don't know exactly. It's a natural 
progression of feedback and communication.

> For instance, if the current location is file:/home/user clicking this 
> button will take you to file:/home"

This is web browsing we're talking about here, and this behaviour is not 
always easy to see and use there.

Cheers,

David
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