setup page icons

[Jens Dagerbo]

On Sunday 18 July 2004 13:47, Tobias Gläßer wrote:
> On So, 2004-07-18 at 12:29 +0200, Bernd Pol wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > although the icons finally are there in the setup select list, I really
> > hate this design. It has a toyish appearance now, and worse yet, I have
> > to scroll to get to a certain setup page low in the list.
> >
> > I definitely want the old decision tree design back (icons appendend to
> > the names would be appreciated, of course). But it is more professional
> > ui design to have the selection visible at on sight, without scrolling
> > needs.
> >
> > BTW: The Code Snippets scissors icon is still missing.
> >
> > Have a nice day,
> > Bernd
>
> Hi,
>
> I agree with your view!
> The configuration dialog is really unintuitive at the moment and your
> proposed solution would suit all people well, I think.
>
> Greetz...
>
> Tobias Gläßer
>

I don't agree. (Surprise!) ;)

The IconList approach has been in cvs for a month now. Waiting for the feature 
freeze to kick in to complain is not the best strategy if you want to affect 
anything. 

It was discussed on #kdevelop before I committed. The only dissent at the time 
was voiced by Tobias, but he was in the minority. 

The old design was nothing but a randomly ordered list ("decision tree" - 
wtf!?). This is bad. With the IconList we're still showing the settings pages 
in random order, but with the icons they are at least a bit quicker to spot. 
(That icons are faster recognized than words is afaik an accepted UI 
"truth".) I disagree that the IconList looks toyish. If anything, the old 
look made us look toyish, or at least unfinished (largely true). 

The IconList makes us consistent with the Katepart settings page, that is 
typically in heavy use in KDevelop. We're also largely consistent with other 
KDE apps. Almost every large KDE app I looked at uses it: Katepart, 
Konqueror, KMail, Quanta, K3b, KWord (to name a few) all use the IconList. 

We're also not alone in forcing the user to scroll (Katepart, Konqueror) but 
this is the part of the design I don't like either. My aim was to finish 
splitting out the optional plugins from the main settings dialogs before 3.1 
and the IconList was part of the preparations. (I never found the time to 
finish this as it affected too large parts of KDevelop to be done properly in 
the given time.) This would make the dialog entries fewer and hopefully fit 
without the need to scroll. I hope to do this during the next development 
(3.2?) cycle. 

Bottom line - I'm not going to revert it. For the above reasons, I would argue 
it would be a bad idea for someone else to do it too. The best thing to do 
now is to add the missing icons. Please help out.


regards,

jd