On 9/3/05, Fred Schaettgen wrote: > > 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"): I do not agree with the interpretation vs. association exclusivity. For instance, consider the back arrow example... back arrows are easially interpreted, and can be easially associated (Back arrow on toolbar vs. back arrow in Go menu)... maybe I don't fully understand the concept, though. > - 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. I have a reccomendation for this: Icons should be used for any items on the toolbar, at the very least. (So, for instance, Back, Forward, Home, Refresh, etc. would all get their icons duplicated in Konqueror's menu). This will help with toolbar associativity. In additioon to that, any action which is shared between applications (Open, Save, Save As, Settings, Quit, New, etc.) should get icons. This will help with action associativity between applications. I don't know if there are any other bits that should have icons... but I feel the above should be considered necessary. > Where should we draw the line in the KDE HIG? > When is it appropriate to use an icon on buttons and menu items? This is largely the same question you just asked... except for the addition of buttons. Concerning that, my opinion is to do something similar to what I detailed above. Any buttons which are commonly used should keep their visual cues to them. Hence, OK, Cancel, Save As, Defaults, Advanced Settings (if we choose to continue using that in KControl), etc should all keep their icons. Action buttons... ones that describe a certain action that will happen ("Accept Cookie" vs "Decline Cookie", for example) should not have those icons. > When is it clearly not appropriate? Mostly, I say action buttons. There are probably more things that I am not considering here... I like providing a "general set" that can be built from rather than limited to... So excluding things isn't really one of my fortes. > To what extend can icons be reused for different actions? My opinion is that icons should be exclusive to 1 action. (This doesn't include overlays, such as the mounted overlays on removable media). It only gets confusing when there are several actions with the same image associated with them. However, that doesn't mean that images cannot be reused at all... Consider the forward and back buttons in Konq. Any time that an action could be expressed or visualized in the concept of forward and back, then those images could be considered. For instance, in KPDF, when you are navigating by bookmarks or pages. > Should all sizes look the same? > > > Fred > > -- > Fred Schaettgen > kde.sch@ttgen.net > _______________________________________________ > kde-usability mailing list > kde-usability@kde.org > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability > _______________________________________________ kde-usability mailing list kde-usability@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability