I’ve created a monster!
It all started with a true and innocent need for pixels. Gnome project was in the very beginning years ago. And it needed icons for the user interface.
Half a decade later, we have icons. Lots of icons. Looking at our software today, it is more or less the de-facto standard that a button or menu item should have an icon. Our original goal was fulfilled with a great success!
But what is the purpose of the icons? Now that we are trying to be more usability-conscious, we try hard to make easier user interfaces, our bold goal is to create software that just works right without tweaking and is pleasant to look at and easy to use. We should look at how we use icons on the user interface.
In my opinion the purpose of the icon is to hilight the important, often needed functionality. Just like you dont put a toolbar button for every menu item (you wouldnt need the menus then) - maybe we should not have icons for all the menu items and buttons either? Mac OS X has no icons at all on menus. Neither OS X nor Windows have icons on dialog buttons. It results in a cleaner user interface.
The original idea of hilighting important items in the interface is not working anymore, because everything is marked as important. We who designed the icons loved the fact that our work was on thousands and thousands of desktops worldwide. The developers loved the extensive icon libraries on their reach. Its everybody’s fault, and it is very understandable that this has happened.
But perhaps now it is a time to get this thing in order too? If you want to have a good example, compare the Firefox default theme (the one with a yellow roof on the home icon) to the nice “Industrial” theme created by Garrett. Garrett’s theme is great, makes Firefox look really nice with Gnome, but you see the point with icons being visual clutter. It’s not Garrett’s fault at all, the theme just matches with Gnome. Another great example of over-using icons is Openoffice.
See my point? What do you think?
September 15th, 2005 at 12:35
I do not fully agree, I think the icons are really usefull in cases such as copy and paste for example. Every time the same icons are used for these actions in every menu, which makes it very easy to find.
Also sometimes an action can not be complete understood just by the description of the menu item, an icon can instantly clearify things in such cases.
Because of these reasons I found the firefox theme of Garrett way more useable than the default one.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:38
I agree with you. I use Gnome daily, and when you stop to think about it, there are indeed icons *everywhere*. If an icon’s goal is indeed to higlight the important, then Gnome has a lot more important items then OSX (my other main desktop environment).
I’ve never read the Gnome HIG thoroughly, but isn’t there a somewhere in the HIG that mandates icons on ie. dialog buttons? If so, then this ought to be changed first.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:52
Well.. I have to say that even if I use new software, when looking for a feature, I browse the menus scanning the icons, NOT reading the text. I don’t think too much icons in the menus are a problem, but to much entries/choices in the menus are. By reducing the number ob preferences and unneded stuff you also reduce the use of icons. This is the way to go IMHO, not copying OSX again for no reason.
Btw: as for those “yes/no”, “cancel/ok” dialogs, using no icons on OSX is probably fine because the button order is always the same. On GNOME, it is the same, too, but looking even at well-integrated 3rd party software like OOo, it’s not the same.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:53
I think you are partly right, it can duplicate a lot of information.
But I think in some cases (like the dialog buttons) more approperiate is (to allow) removing the _text_ from the places where information is duplicated instead of the icons. Icons have colour and shape more than text, which makes icons easier to recognise. Also, when was the last time you actually read what the label on the stock dialog button said…?
This of course is dependant of good, clear and properly interpetable icons to work right.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:56
I don´t think them main reason we like icons in our desktop is highlight things. We have icons to represent things as another way of doing it, instead of textual representation for example. I don’t think the issue is: it’s important use an icon.
Another mayor reason to use icons is preatiness, we like it.
Where I agree with you is that to many icons in menus makes don’t help you find what you look for (to many to see nothing) and make dificult read the text (to many things near the text forces you to read secuencialy instead of finding the option in a first look.
September 15th, 2005 at 12:59
I don’t really agree with you. When I see the OpenOffice gnomish menu, for example, I see icon on only some entries. And that’s nice.
One great example : when a right click on a link in Firefox to save the target on my disk, it takes me always 4-5 second to see where the “download target is”.
With epiphany, it’s really quickier because I just look for the icon with the little green arrow.
It seems that it’s a little the thing, but it the major reason why I use Epiphany and hate Firefox !!! Really.
I like the way menu look for now.
September 15th, 2005 at 13:02
Stefan: I dont disagree - it makes sense to have the icons hilight the important items. That’s what I tried to say too. OS X just is the other extreme and has no icons on menus at all. But Mac never had, except for the apple menu on Mac OS 9.
Thom: Yeah, this blog was mostly to get a discussion started - whether this will lead to a decision and eventually to changing the HIG etc, is to be seen. The HIG is not something set in stone, it’s like source code - a thing that can also evolve.
Michael: Yeah. Consistency is an important goal to go towards. But I do agree that good text labels for menus and buttons do really matter. Would you be able to work with menus that had only icons, no text at all?
Kalle: This only works if you have already familiar with the icons. A picture is worth a thousand words, sure, but a 24×24 pixels worth of picture is a bit lacking in the expressive power. And different people might have different ideas about symbols before they learn them. So I dont think removing the labels really is a possible thing to do.
September 15th, 2005 at 13:05
Ploum: I do not mean to remove icons completely. In this case, on Firefox, one would determine what are the important items that people use the most. Save to disk would definitely be one of them. So instead of seeing 14 menu items *with icons* you’d see 14 menu items. One of the important ones that also has an icon, would be your “Save to disk” you are looking for. With the green arrow. So what you say does not seem like a problem to me..?
For not-often used items you don’t have such “green arrow” -associations anyway.
September 15th, 2005 at 13:32
I think that icons on toolbars, panel, desktop are ok. Icons on buttons and menus are a waste of space. I think that the rationale of icons in menus entries is that you can do the same action using the corresponding icons in the toolbar but this same information for the user is dupplicated in tooltips and labels under icons.
September 15th, 2005 at 13:48
I kind of see your point about menu icons, although I do like having icons on buttons. I think they give a good visual cue as to what the button does - for example, every “close” button has the close icon, so I can spot one quickly.
September 15th, 2005 at 14:10
I fully agree, and go further thinking that icons in menus and buttons should only appear in the most unusual of circumstances (e.g favicons for bookmarks).
It reminds me of Tufte’s ‘chartjunk’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk) most of which is there to (at least in intention) make things clearer or prettier, but just gets in the way. Or the good-old preferences debate, since everyone has a ‘most important’ preference and a ‘most important’ menu item, and you try to please everyone you’ll please no-one.
This was also the third item noted by MPT in his initial impression of Ubuntu:
http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2005/04/11/ubuntu
September 15th, 2005 at 14:10
Buttons in dialogs should (as described in the HIG) also be distinguishable by their order. But I also like to have the icons as an insurancy. I once worked at a console in french locale - everything was like my font was broken, but thanks to the icons (more than the placement of the buttons) I could finish my work.
I know that for administrators, it should be easy to install the apropriate locales, but for when they are not available, the icons really help.
I also see that you still have to associate the meaning of the icons to a certain action, but once this easy task is done it really helps (me at least). I’m used to it (and I do like the eye-candy), but still I cannot imagine the icons *distracting* in the workflow. To the contrary: looking at dull, older (gtk1.2) interfaces make me shiver.
So at the bottom line: Once you had the icons, you don’t want to miss them again. At least the GTK stock icons.
September 15th, 2005 at 14:11
Another problem I see with using icons for ‘everything’ is missing icons. For instance, open a Nautilus window, and select the File/Edit/etc. menus– you’ll see that many entries do not have an icon at all.
Even though I would prefer Gnome to be a bit less generous with icons, I would obviously not make a big deal out of it the rules on icons stay as they are. However, then do make sure you’ve got icons for everything. Now it just looks… Unfinished.
September 15th, 2005 at 14:35
I think you’ve gotten the purpose of icons mixed up.
Once we learn icons, it is much faster to identify an image than to read words (if the image is well designed).
Having words-with-icons is good only because it makes the buttons bigger by default (it’s kind of a hack for getting big buttons, which are easier to press) and because it makes the icon “discoverable”.
I think having consistency (save always has the same picture, whether in a menu or on a toolbar or in a dialog) is more important than issues of cluttering.
September 15th, 2005 at 14:58
Thom wrote: “…then do make sure you’ve got icons for everything. Now it just looks… Unfinished.”
Yes, replying to myself here. No matter what the outcome of this discussion is, it might in any case be a good moment to reflect upon icons as a whole in Gnome, not just their placement.
Many users have complained that the Gnome standard icon theme needs an update. Even though I disagree with that (I really like the current theme), I do understand where they’re coming from.
So, it might be a good idea to combine my complaint (of cours eonly if it’s valid; depends on if more people find it a problem) with updating the icon theme, no matter the outcome of the discussion. So, while updating the theme, one might as well create mor eicons so that every menu item has a proper icon.
September 15th, 2005 at 15:05
The same thing that happend with widgets. How much cleaner and easier to scan it is now. Removing visual clutter like the frames around widgets and using whitespace to group control together.
Not only will cleansing the icon noise help with usability, it will also help with artwork maintainability.
September 15th, 2005 at 15:46
I don’t agree to remove them entirely because I think they overall rather help than distract people. They should be chosen with care and only used when they provide a faster overview - see Fitt’s law (or was it Hick’s ? ). But most of the time less might be more…
September 15th, 2005 at 17:13
I do not agree. Are really icons meant to mark things as important? I always think of it as a way to illustrate things, make the button or menu item more undestandable.. It’s a visual way do identify things, so you don’t have to read the button or menu label, it make things quickier to manipulate.. the humam brain process the icon faster than the menu or button label.. So you look the icon and quickly know that the menu item is used for “new”, “copy”, “paste”, “import”, etc.. I agree that they are really not necessary on *every* menu item or button.. but i don’t think there is any abuse on gnome. I know its difficult for you guys (jimmac, tigert) to maintain it… but don’t take this approach of removing the icons.. this is a “small” way of thinking.. Instead, teach more people how to make the icons, make tutorials.. it’s an open source world, there is always people wanting to contribute, they just don’t know how to contribute or how to make the icons.. Got the idea?
September 15th, 2005 at 17:48
Let’s talk this over at the Boston Summit: http://live.gnome.org/Boston2005
September 15th, 2005 at 17:48
Icons are meant to make navigation easier. It has little to do with importance although it can of course happen that you don’t care enough about unimportant items to put in any effort to make them more navigatable.
Cheers,
Waldo
As posted by Florian Graessle to kde-core-devel:
William Horton in “The Icon Book” (Wiley) says: “Almost all research
comparing the use of visual symbols and word labels has found that the
combination of the two works better than either alone.”
Two actual research papers about this:
Edigo, C., and Patterson, J. (1988). Pictures and category labels as
navigational aids for catalog browsing. Human Factors in Computing
Systems: CHI ‘88 Conference Proceedings, 127-132:
They compared people’s ability to navigate through a database using
either only icons, only text labels, or a combination of both and
discovered that people could reach their target fastest when icons and
text were combined.
Muter, P., and Mayson, C. (1986). The role of graphics in item selection
for menus. Behaviour and Information Technology, 5(1), 89-95:
They examined the role of graphics in the selection of items from a
menu. The study found that a text-graphics combination significantly
reduced the number of errors that people made when selecting the item
they wanted — selection accuracy increased.
September 15th, 2005 at 17:48
If you ask like that… fully agreed. Let the weeding begin.
September 15th, 2005 at 17:59
Try adding these two lines to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0:
gtk-button-images = 0
gtk-menu-images = 0
September 15th, 2005 at 18:09
[…] I fully agree with Tuomas regarding the over-use of icons everywhere. […]
September 15th, 2005 at 18:09
Thanks for the comments so far, some good points there.
Now, realize that I am mostly discussing icons *in menus* here. Of course desktop items will have an icon, as well as toolbars etc. So this is about application menus. Not the desktop in general.
There seem to be two things here: One is having often-used and important menu items “marked” with a familiar icon. This makes it easier to find the item one is looking for. Another thing is that icons in general add to the information, thus making scanning for a certain item easier.
My question: Is it better to remove icons from non-”important” (subjective definition of course) items so that the important ones would get more “visibility” and would be easier to find?
Many of you are arguing about learned icons making things easy to find - those things you learn are very likely the ones you use most, and thus would be the ones that would keep the icon to themselves. It’s not about removing everything. It’s about removing the *other* ones and hopefully making it even easier to find the often needed items.
We cannot emphasize everything, that will make things just too cluttered and defeats the whole point.
Sven: Yeah, I have that for buttons. But I do not wish to remove menu icons entirely, just cut down the number of them. Reducing icons also requires that we have good labels for buttons and menus.
September 15th, 2005 at 18:10
Icons are a tradeoff.
They are nice to look at and attract the eye, but take attention and time from the words. The best are simple universal symbols that already have definite interpretations (red X, for example), but many try to convey complex actions via a small static picture.
For each icon we must ask “Is the information and beauty derived from this icon worth the attention and effort that will be exerted by the user?”
Gnome has gone a little overboard on icons, but there is no need to overhaul everything. We can remove a couple of icons (or all icons on dialog box buttons) for a release and see how that works, iterating towards the right balance.
September 15th, 2005 at 18:10
I actually like having icons. The important thing is to have consistency of the icons however. It is easy to remember when I want to do a certain task to look for the familiar “disk” icon to save. Or, when I start evolution, I always remember the “yellow circle” icon. This kind of visual memory makes it very easy to find what I’m looking for. However, if it is a task that I don’t use very often, I probably won’t remember what the icon looks like and in this case the value of the icon is greaty diminished.
September 15th, 2005 at 18:17
Well, if studies shows it’s easier to use both image and text, I wont argue with that.
An important factor is though, the feeling you get when you’re using the menus. Industrial Firefox File menu feels very bloated right now, and removing the clutter makes your apps feel more lightweight (and faster).
I’m also wondering, if people need an icon to understand the meaning of a menu item, perhaps it’s the word that’s not really optimal. It’s also good to be consitent in wording of things.
September 15th, 2005 at 18:42
@Tuomas
“Would you be able to work with menus that had only icons, no text at all?”
Well, not entirely… but let’s have a look at Gimp for example. I like using the gimp, but I don’t use it too often (not being the graphics guy). It’s a fact that -fo me- finding the function I’m looking for is much easier when there is an icon. There are several reasons:
1.) I tend to have a quick scan over the icons when a menu opens even before reading the labels
2.) Sometimes i know exactly what I want to do but don’t know how it is called. A good icon (and I think most icons used in GNOME are very very well done) makes it possible to quicky find the function even if I don’t know what it’s called.
So my point is that icons (assuming they have a clear meaning) ease menu navigation even if you are not used to those icons because you use them every day.
September 15th, 2005 at 18:53
As far as icons in menus being unintuative, I’d have to dissagree. I recognise icons MUCH fast than text (usually when using a gnome app, i don’t even have to read a menu item (such as open, close, save, save-as). i see the icon and click on it. i find firefox’s (default) iconless menus a pain because i actually have to search up and down the menus reading each one to find trivial functions such as close tab, etc.
just my 2 cents.
September 15th, 2005 at 19:00
Sure. Please try to read what I am writing.
The Open, Save etc are just the important, familiar icons that I think need to stay. I am talking about removing other stuff from the menus to give better emphasis on the often needed ones.
It’s like writing text. You use boldface or italics on the main point perhaps - to make it stand out. If everything stands out, sure, it can look pretty (hey, as an artist I like icons too!) - but is it better?
Just like writing text, delivering the message is the important thing - the user interface of the software exists so you can get the job done. Both can look pretty while doing that, but it’s not the main point.
September 15th, 2005 at 19:01
[…] Original by Tigert Tigert’s blog […]
September 15th, 2005 at 19:32
I hate self-modifying menus as much as the next guy, but I wonder if it would work if the visibility of a menu icon would be determined by the usage pattern. For instance, I have absolotely no use for the print menu items because I own no printer, and thus wouldn’t mind losing the icons, but I’m sure many would consider those “important” menu items that deserved their icon.
Of course, I realize we have absolutely no infrastructure for this kind of thing and probably won’t get it, either. And it’s possible I’m on crack.
September 15th, 2005 at 19:51
I wonder if GTK+ could be really clever and when an interface is built with GtkActions only show icons in the menu bar when there is a toolbar button also created for that action.
This way you’d magically get icons on “common” entries, and no icons for entries for which the icon doesn’t serve as an association between the menu bar and the tool bar.
September 15th, 2005 at 20:04
Tuomas,
Sorry, i missed your previous comment about keeping important menu items. (I had just read in your blog post about how “maybe we shouldn’t have icons in the menus at all) and panicly wrote a reply
I agree, not everything should have an icon. Only universal items that are prevalent throughout the desktop. Items like save, open and close should have icons, but probably not an entry like “Manage Bookmarks” (Firefox example again).
September 15th, 2005 at 20:12
Without icons everywhere would make GNOME more faster, ain’t it?
September 15th, 2005 at 20:54
I definitely agree that a lot of icons should just go away. In fact I set the two gtk-settings to false a long time ago. It really is much nicer. It’s the same thing as going from KDE to GNOME: it just feelo much less in-your-face.
(I don’t believe people who say they scan/recognice/find/whatever buttons with icons faster — people have *no* clue how much time something they do themselves is taking).
I don’t even think the common menu items should have icons.
The only place where I am missing the icons are on the window selector menu and on the panel->applications menu.
September 15th, 2005 at 21:22
A link to one of the research papers noted earlier:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~muter/Abs1986b.htm
I think the fact that it is from 1986 and deals with Videotext pages (what we in the UK call Ceefax or Teletext) renders it less relevant.
Another interesting quote, for the anti-menu-icons camp: “On the other hand, Mills (1981) speculated that a graphic for each alternative on choice pages may actually impair the speed or accuracy of performance. The graphics may be redundant, and may distract and mislead the user.”
September 15th, 2005 at 21:53
IMVHO ope of the problems with icons is that they encourage people to waste _vertical_ space.
For example in a toolbar there’s the icon, then there’s space around the icon, then there’s more space between the toolbar and the menu, etc etc and you end up with a very thick toolbar…
Wish: I wish there was a rule in the HIG that specifies that vertical space should not be wasted!
Yep, vertical space is important! One wants to fit as many lines of text (or other stuff) on the screen at a time as possible.
September 15th, 2005 at 23:08
Maybe it’s just me, but I personally use the icons to find the right button all the time. I totally agree with OpenOffice having way too many icons in the Toolbars (and also many in the menus, but the menus would suck even without icons because there are just too many entries). I am not sure that just removing the icons from the buttons makes it any better. If we do so we (well you design guys) have to come up with some cool new UI for many of the dialogs (see Shaun’s post for what I mean).
Cheers,
Christian
September 16th, 2005 at 05:23
For all that is good and holy let us be absolutely clear this is a theming issue!
Do not encourge developers make any further efforts to write non standard inconsistent code which makes it even harder to have a coherent looking desktop.
I have already had to deal with developers who would not use stock items because they didn’t want icons in context menus. (I didn’t bother arguing the point, although I reiterated why I thought this was a bad idea and should have been solved through theming.)
Already the aesthetic choices of individual developers are breaking Desktop consistency. If individual developers use code instead of themes to turn off these icons they make it impossible to turn them back on for anyone who might want them. (Does that count as an accessibility issue?)
Not wanting icons means some developer will refuse to use stock icons, which means they also miss out on the stock labels with their translations and create unnecessary work for translators.
Frankly I’m amazed how translators put up with so much unncessary churn, redundant work, and the sheer difficulty of the work they do. I dont think most developers would tolerate that kind of instability from their platform.
I would love to see a custom theme that explored this concept futher.
It might also be worth noting that Gtk WIMP includes themes which disable button icons.
I should warn you though there are developer out there using buttons with no text labels and only an icon. I have been warning developers they should use toolbars instead of icon only buttons but they rarely listen. Turning off all icons will badly break those applications and make them unusable. (See the GIMP, the old version of Gfig using the Gtk WIMP theme engine for a real life example.)
Please do bring this discussion to the usability mailing list, usability (at) gnome (dot) org
September 16th, 2005 at 11:36
Have you seen screenshots of MS Office 12? They appear to go in the opposite direction, by replacing menus with a tabbed list of panels with icons.
Compared with that, a GNOME desktop with some icons removed will look pretty bland.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/features/2005/09-13Office12-Word_lg.jpg
September 16th, 2005 at 15:22
Icons can be a blessing if you are not sitting in front of your own personal computer and the locale is set to a language you don’t know about. If this seems not very likely, think about visiting an internet cafe in a foreign country.
September 17th, 2005 at 08:26
First off, welcome back. It’s been a long time, and I was wondering where you had disappeared to.
I agree that in a fair few instances under the GNOMe (and KDE) desktops icons are just not necessary. Many menus are just littered with them and they only make them bigger and bulkier. As usual (which is fine) not everyone likes their desktops this way, so what about making this an easier thing to change and alter to one’s liking? Allow end-users to easily alter their menus by removing some of the icons?
My 2 cents.
Pascal Klein
September 17th, 2005 at 23:22
Well, I agree in a few instances, I thing the icons are iportant to the user, some users like too beautiful your desktop with a full icons, in my personal point of view I like a little icons in my desktop but I need, some Icons to work more easily, and this day I reinstall my linux Debian, I use a gdesklets api and I try to configure de louncher bar, but I don`t nkow what icons use to my bar, I have too icons and I use only few. This is the moment when the peopple thing in this moment exist a thousend of icons, I thing stop no more jeje. thats old
bye and sorry for my bad english
September 18th, 2005 at 16:48
I strongly disagree. I think you are mislead here: icons are not for emphasis, but for make navigation easy. It really makes using GNOME much easiear than windows.
“Oh, Windows and OSX do not do that… We must be wrong!”
I don’t think so… That is one thing GNOME does BETTER than the other GUIs. In other example, my navigation when I used MS Word 2003 was better than Word 2000 and Word 97 because it have much more icons on menus.
Yes, it is “learned”. But GNOME should begin to respect learned user behavior too.
September 19th, 2005 at 00:18
A lot of icons can be visual noise. That makes navigation actually harder, because it’s not easy to find the needle in the haystack.
September 19th, 2005 at 06:31
I know you’ve got a million comments already and you probably wont even read this but I just wanted to give my 2 cense. I personally love all the icons. It makes it so you dont have to read every menu item every time you want to click it. Instead, your brain recognises the color/shape pattern and you can go right to it. I use macs a lot and find that I have trouble jumping through menus quickly because they dont have unique icons for everything.
I do think that what you said perfectly applies to the gnome panel though. To get the funtionality you want, it requires the panel to look cluttered and bloated. I have no idea how this can be changed though =(
September 19th, 2005 at 17:18
Luke: Of course I read the comments.. It’s important feedback. I only skip the ones talking about texas holdem poker
Now, what I am trying to say is *not* that we should remove all icons. What I am saying is, the original idea of making navigation easier by adding *select* icons to important menu entries does not work anymore, because the “de-facto” standard seems to suddenly have become that every item should have an icon.
Menus need to be usable even without icons. That must be the starting point. We need to pay more attention to clear menu labels, good organization and we should try to reduce clutter and simplify the user interface so that things make more sense. Then adding the select icons to often-needed items would be good.
Just emphasizing everything might be good for people with strong visual memory, but unfortunately I think it might be a distraction generally. That’s why I am wondering about this whole issue - what is the best all-round approach?
The self-learning menus is an interesting idea, but I too wonder if it is a sensible thing to do - we developers have a tendency to think that all problems can be solved with clever algorithms. But sometimes there are no generic solutions. Having such an infrastructure might be fun, but kind of crazy waste of effort and resources too.
Steven: Definitely, lets discuss at the Summit. Will be great to meet again
//T
September 21st, 2005 at 00:13
AAH! Yes I totally agree then. I read “making navigation easier by having select icons”… I was assuming that you wanted to remove the rest by default. Correct me if I am wrong but you are saying that gnome apps should be made to support both icon users and non-icon users? Making clear menu lables is an awesome idea and i’ve noticed that some distros already do this. I’ve used java desktop and thats pretty much all they did: change the .desktop files so the menus were more coherent. But like I said. I use the icons so that I can visually grep the menu and not have to read them.
I happen to prefer Garretts firefox skin out of all the rest because it is so visual and I dont have to think to navigate. I can keep concentrated on the content of the web page I am viewing.
Like you said though, there are 2 types of people. Visual and non-visual. The only clear solution I can see is to make it clear and simple that there is a choice and try to make other design settings based on that as well. I’m very happy with your post now and applaud your paradigm breaking thinking =)
October 12th, 2005 at 12:18
too much teh icons!
I fully agree. Another good example would be the current gimp. It’s also stuffed with icons but now it’s even harder to find what you need in those menus than it was before.
November 19th, 2005 at 23:12
Just my two cents on OSX menus, yes they don’t have menus, but they have clear and easy to remember keyboard shortcuts on them, which are very easy to learn and speedup a lot working.
let me explain, in the PC world we commonly have shift, ctrl and alt(sometimes called meta) modifiers and those labels are written on the keyboard, on a mac keyboard we have the same keys (alt is also known as option) plus command (or apple key) and every modifier has an icon associated to it (with the exception of ctrl which its represented by the ^ sign, but is labeled ctrl on the keyboard)
This is done with an easy trick, modifiers are icons
For common tasks,in this way, it’s very easy learn the shortcut, and simply forget of the menus
November 26th, 2005 at 17:46
[…] I’ve tried tigerts idea, disabling icons in menus and buttons since a couple of weeks back now. Know what? It actually works really good, it also looks really clean. It felt a bit strange to begin with, but the idea is growing on me. […]
November 26th, 2005 at 18:42
Am I the only one who thinks it’s nice to have icons in buttons just because it looks good? What happened to wanting aesthetically pleasing environments? I have posters on my wall, it’d reduce visual noise to remove them but I don’t want to …..
November 26th, 2005 at 23:11
Performance-wise, I agree. Running GNOME without icons in menus, on buttons etc. makes the system a lot more speedy.
But, for me, icons make the computer easier to use, because I have a visual handicap. When I see the symbol of an empty screen in my menus, I know that clicking that will start the terminal, and I react instantly without having to read the text (which can take time).
So, a good compromise can be to let the user choose, as of today, perhaps by making the non-icon way the standard one.
November 27th, 2005 at 13:59
If you’ve ever had to use a program that is only available in a language you can’t read what-so-ever (Like Chinese in my case.) Icons (and mnemonics) are wonderful. Especially for dialogs! I don’t think GNOME’s current use of icons looks bad at all and it has this wonderful side-effect of allowing someone who’s used a program in one language to do basic things in another.
November 28th, 2005 at 08:03
I agree with Tom Hinkle. I find it easier to scan for something by icon than by word. As an extreme example, consider the “rotate” menu on GIMP. I always scan for the arrow rotating the way I want rather than turn my graphical idea into text to compare with the text of the menu for “CCW 90°”. In general I find the fastest way to use menus for applications I know is keyboard accelerators.
One could argue the merits of menus long enough to need icons, but when menus get over a few entries long, I really feel icons make use faster.
December 1st, 2005 at 17:46
[…] Some people have been pondering the idea of not showing any icons in GNOME application’s menus. These two guys are known to know what they are talking about so I gave it a try (icons are easily turned off in the preferences panel). […]
February 9th, 2006 at 01:13
Hi,
first sorry, because I didn’t read the complete commentes. I think you are right to think about, when is the using of an icon correct and where it can be reduced.
I also think, unless every application and every enviroment use the same order for yes/no/cancel etc using of icons in buttons is helpful.
Another advantage of icons are to help people, who didn’t can read the text e.g. different language, illiterates, children.
February 10th, 2007 at 11:53
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