Re: UI design [was Owen Taylor's paper]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 05:55:05PM -0400, Jef Spaleta wrote:
> If placement and layout were critical to operations...there would be no
> visual hinting...hell we could all just run everything via keyboard
> shortcut combos
My other grief with GNOME 2: there is no default button in most dialogs.
They were apparently afraid that new users will have wrong assumptions as
to what the default would be, but this is removing an useful optimization
for me. Oh well, time to get used to more complex keyboard shortcuts for
OK and Next.

> ....but they aren't critical and were never meant to be
> critical...thats why we have icons and text next to buttons and menu
> items...to inform you before you click.  If you choose to ignore the
> visual hints...its your problem and your choice to not pay attention.  
They are not functionality-critical, but may be thought of as
performance-critical. I can read the dialog question, look at the usual
place for the "affirmative" button (and move my mouse), and just confirm
that the button is what I expected it to be. By essentially randomizing
the placement of the buttons, I have to read 0.5 button more on average.

After working with the same font for a few years, just changing a font
on the console is annoying and slowing me down until I get used to it
(I'm not saying that this should not have been done). But here I can't
get used to the new behavior because there is none.
	Mirek