Changing my mind: reverting my menubar, toolbars and statusbar changes

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Saturday 06 November 2010, Ingomar Wesp wrote:
> Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> > I have been quite busy trying to convince everyone actions to
> > toggle UI items such as menubar, toolbars, sidebars or statusbar
> > should be labeled "Show/hide Foo" depending on the visibility of
> > Foo rather than implemented as a checkable "[ ] Show Foo" item.
> 
> Having followed the discussion and how you fought to get this change
> in, I'm a bit saddened that it turned out to not work so well in
> practice.
> 
> Maybe we can tackle the underlying issue in another way. If I
> understood the problem correctly, it basically boils down to
> 
> [X] Show Foo
> 
> textually implying the opposite of the action that the user is going
> to trigger if (s)he clicks it. If we keep the checkboxes, maybe we
> are able to change the text, so that it is obvious that it describes
> the current state rather than an action by changing the verb into an
> adjective:
> 
> [X] Foo shown
> [X] Foo visible
> [X] Foo enabled
> 
> Just an idea...

IMHO that does not really fix the problem. I think the real problem is 
that we think that an additional qualifier like "Show" or "shown" is 
necessary. As if our users would not understand what the state of the 
checkbox preceding the menu entry signifies.

I just had a look at Firefox (maybe others can check applications from 
other "vendors" like Apple, Microsoft, etc.)

Firefox has the options to show/hide certain UI components in the View 
menu (while we have them in the Settings menu). In this menu Firefox 
simply lists the UI components names without any verbs, adjectives, 
etc., i.e.

View
     Toolbars
      [x] Navigation Toolbar
      [x] Bookmarks Toolbar
 [x] Status Bar
     Sidebar
      [ ] Bookmarks
      [ ] History

Does it really matter that Firefox has those options in the View menu 
while we have them in the Settings menu? I don't think so.

So, why don't we simply get rid of "Show" (and the "Shown" in Settings-
>Toolbars Shown). IMHO those qualifiers are totally superfluous in 
combination with checkboxes. Our convention to add the "Show" does stem 
from a time where we could (and did) hide the checkboxes of checkable 
menu entries. Apparently, with Qt 4 the checkboxes of checkable menu 
entries cannot be hidden. Since we are already at Qt 4.7 it seems very 
unlikely that QtDF will ever change this. So why insist on a convention 
that does not make any sense anymore?

Just my 2 cents.


Regards,
Ingo
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