[kde-guidelines] Phrasing of selection teasers

[Diego Moya]

On 26 August 2013 16:54, Heiko Tietze <heiko.tietze at user-prompt.com> wrote:

> Am Montag, 26. August 2013, 16:39:59 schrieb Thomas Pfeiffer:
> > Have you seen the arguments against it? In fact, they only point to
> > situations where the dual-list pattern indeed is not optimal.
> > This shows me that we might have to refine the "When to use" criteria
> > even further, though.
> Actually, I'm not a big fan of this pattern too. Its usability is second to
> none but it looks outdated and 'smells like work', like sorting stuff from
> one
> filing cabinet to another.
> And I have no idea how we could refine the criteria without repeating
> ourself.
> Perhaps in this way: 'Always try to replace the selection from large lists
> by
> repeated simple choices with smaller lists.'
>

The dual-list pattern *is* outdated - it's a remanent of a time where list
views couldn't show checkboxes for checkable items and required ctrl+click
for multiple selection. Adding a column with checkboxes to items in the
selection list eliminates the need for a second separate list, and provides
a simpler interaction, where a multiple selection is made with a single
click on each selected item, instead of requiring a second click on the
horizontal "add/remove" arrows.

The only case I can think of that dual-list pattern may be needed is when
the list needs reordering; but at that time, what you have is two separate
widgets: one list with the checklists for multiple selection and one list
with the ordered items. This allows thinking of both lists as independent
from each other, which makes for a simple mental model (the lists could be
at different dialogs, solving the problem of requiring too much space).
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