Better default toolbar setting

Stefan Monov logixoul at gmail.com
Sat Sep 2 19:16:04 CEST 2006


> > Opening this URL automatically votes good.
> This is a mistake of mine.
This is a mistake of the webmaster: the vote should be passed via POST rather 
than GET. No worries.

> Is it so ugly?
Ugliness is a subjective thing, but some of it's principles are more or less 
consistently applicable. In UI design, those include:
1. The spacing and sizing in a series of homogenous items (such as 
toolbuttons) is prettier when constant.
2. Images are prettier then text
[disclaimer: I just made up these.]
Your proposal fails both.
If you are still unconvinced, add text labels to the toolbuttons in Konqueror 
for a New Experience, state it in the changelog and see the reaction of the 
public.

> I have set my KGet toolbar like the proposal.
Then either you have a peculiar taste, or you care about comfort more than you 
care about beauty.

> In an app with few icons in the toolbar there is enough space for the icons
> labels, so, why not to use it? 
As I said, it'd look ugly.
To partially make up for the wasted space, increase the size of icons.

> this is not a text processor "format" 
> icons, where everybody understant the meaning of a bold or italic "A" icon, 
> this is a download manager program and not all the people is so used to it.
I associate a red X with deletion more easily than a bold A with emphasis.

> A good icon + label is more explanatory than just a good icon, isn't it?
No.
We can reasonably expect that the user has been exposed to a hardware music 
player device before. These commonly signify "stop" by a square. Therefore a 
square is always interpreted as "stop", especially when it's a red one (red 
denotes "stop" in a variety of applications). Same goes for the other icons.

Sorry for my bad English. Your feedback is valuable.


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