Comments on: Toolbar Styles

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:20:59 +0000

I have to agree with DanA and RainCT here — in the screenshot of the proposed improvement, I can’t tell what icons #6 and #7 are supposed to do. I had to look at the old, unimproved screenshot to find out they were Junk and Not Junk.

Maybe once you get to Power User level this makes sense, but it seems to me that this would make things more difficult for new users, and shouldn’t be the new default.

By: Alexander van Loon

Alexander van Loon — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:15:13 +0000

In my opinion icons only is the best. Arguments in support of it have already been written, and I don’t have to add anything to it.

But if no agreement can be reached, what’s the big deal? How often do you open the Appearance Preferences dialog? I don’t do it much.

By: Connor

Connor — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:52:27 +0000

Why don’t you make Gtk+ actually make the items more like native drawing on Windows instead of making it look like someone wiped their arse with. And actually drop C

By: Rodney Dawes

Rodney Dawes — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:48:56 +0000

Icons only is the only way. If you need the labels, the icons are wrong, or it shouldn’t have an icon or be in the toolbar. If the icons aren’t distinguishable, then one or more of them need new metaphors.

By: Jakub

Jakub — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:26:04 +0000

Why not leave it the way it is right now (choice up to the user), and only optimize applications (such as gedit) to work better with all options, since we have so many different opinions?

By: Hylke

Hylke — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:36:59 +0000

Flavio: why is a browser special?

“For example I would be confused by Gedit icons without a text label. Noone would ever be able to distinguish between Find ad Replace.”

I agree.

By: Patrys

Patrys — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:49:59 +0000

David:

The link you refer to is about menus. Keep in mind toolbars are there to function as a shortcut to the menus, not as a replacement. Every application should be perfectly functional with toolbars turned off.

By: Flavio

Flavio — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:11:11 +0000

@Hylke
“Not all icons need labels. I agree, a lot do. For example: are you confused by the icons in firefox?”
Firefox does not even respect the GNOME settings and the browser is a very special application. For example I would be confused by Gedit icons without a text label. Noone would ever be able to distinguish between Find ad Replace.

By: David

David — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:36:54 +0000

Shouldn’t there be a fifth choice: icons besides text? That is, all buttons have text, which reinouts’ link showed is more useful than icons, and the buttons that are used the most have icons also. This gives the most useful and common functions a more distinct look and a larger hit area. This would also make toolbars more similar to menus, where text is always used but icons are also used sometimes.

By: F Wolff

F Wolff — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:54:15 +0000

Please be sure to test things like these in many (human) languages. Many translations can be much longer than the original English messages, and might grow beyond the minimum screen width you might want to support. For example, “Not Junk” (9 characters) is “Nie gemors nie” in Afrikaans (14 characters). One can expect even greater variances for short strings. For reference, check this article:
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/article-text-size

To create fake translations of a length you feel you should support, you might be interested in podebug:
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/podebug