[TYPO3-core] RFC: #7986: Vertical aligned Icons in List-Module

Dmitry Dulepov [typo3] dmitry at typo3.org
Tue Apr 8 20:39:45 CEST 2008


Hi yet again!

Dmitry Dulepov [typo3] wrote:
> Actually I think this is what disturbed me much in the screenshot: all 
> rows are different. I am used to typical toolbars where I see all 
> buttons, I know their positions and I always see that button is not 
> available when it is greyed out. Examples are well-known: any Windows or 
> MacOS app (Word, for example). May be we should the same approach here?

I just found the same view in Alan Cooper's "About Face: the essentials of user interface design". Quoting from chapter 23:

"...Unlike menus, we don't depend on toolbar buttons to teach us how they are used. Although we depend on buttons primarilly for speed and convenience, their behavior should not mislead us. Toolbar buttons should become disabled when they are no longer applicable due to the current selection. They may or may not gray out - this is up to you -
but if a button becomes moot, it must not offer the pliant response: the button must not depress.

I've seen programs that make moot buttons disappear alltogether, and the effect of this is ghastly. The supposedly Rock-of-Gibraltar-like toolbar becomes this skittish, tentative idiom that scares the daylights of new users and disorients even those more expereinced (me!)..."

-- 
Dmitry Dulepov
TYPO3 core team
Web: http://typo3bloke.net/
Skype: callto:liels_bugs
"Nothing is impossible. There are only limits to our knowledge"


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