From kde-usability  Wed Mar 30 00:18:49 2005
From: Tim Hutt <tdh29 () cam ! ac ! uk>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:18:49 +0000
To: kde-usability
Subject: Show/Hide vs Checkbox
Message-Id: <200503300118.49660.tdh29 () cam ! ac ! uk>
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-usability&m=111216845819500

Hi,

Just a quick note to say that using menu items that change from (for example) 
'Show Offline Users' to 'Hide Offline Users' is a poor design.

Changing the text requires that you actually *read* the menu each and every 
time you use it. This is obviously bad. Most people navigate gui's primarily 
by position. This is why they top left menu is always 'File' (or similar) and 
contains 'New', 'Open', 'Save' in that order. And 'Exit'/'Close' at the 
bottom. It helps to know where things are.

Now obviously the menu items don't change place, but it is much much easier to 
find a constant text and see if the checkbox next to it is checked than it is 
to read the first word (and Show and Hide look quite similar).

Grrrr!

Bad examples of this are: Kopete->Settings->First 5 options
And: Juk->View->First 3 options.

Anyway, enough of the rant. I should probably file specific bug reports with 
patches if I want anything to happen about this right?

-Tim
_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability