Re: GnuCash page on GO site

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 16:44, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 01:00

> Well, no. The icon/progress indicator is much too small. You have to 
> focus your eyes to see it (literally).  You can't just stand at the 
> other end of the room, glance at the screen and get the status;
> you have to push your nose to the glass and focus and look for the 
> icons/progress bars.

Right, that's why it's supposed to be a redundant mechanism.  If you
have trouble with your eyesight (as you presumably have, if you've
selected a 'use only theme colours' preference), you're unlikely to be
looking at something from the other side of a room :)  And if you don't
have trouble with your eyesight, then sure, by all means stick with
whatever colours/flashing the app makes available.

> Maybe you've not been in a trading room or control room or hosptial
> ICU.

Sure I have... I actually helped design some of Reuters' trading room
apps in the early 90s, and a couple of experimental air traffic control
tools for Heathrow into the bargain :)  And colours and flashing are
great-- sometimes essential, as you say-- if you have that kind of
limited target audience in a known environment.  But when you're
designing an app to be used by anyone, anywhere, be they old, young,
colour blind, totally blind, epileptic or whatever, you just have to be
more careful.  

That's really all that the HIG guidelines are trying to ensure... that
anyone can run any GNOME application and be sure that they're not going
to see something that (quite literally) makes their eyes hurt :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:[email protected]            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems