Re: UI-suggestions

[Dave Bordoley <bordoley msu edu>]

On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 10:50, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> 
> Hi, I just subscribed. I guess I should lurk a while, but I wanted to
> pop these things of my thought-stack...
> 
> Why is the icon for "save" an image of a floppy drive? Okay, I know
> the historical reasons (it made sense on my parents' 386 with win
> 3.11), but why keep it these days?
> 
> I realized it when I switched to Emacs 21 from Emacs 20 (because it
> has a toolbar). I went like "hmm, how do I save using the
> toolbar... huh? what does the 'floppy-icon' do?".
> 
> Most of the people on this planet has never used windows.
> 
> Well, some people will just answer me "think of something better,
> then!" It's hard. Maybe a pen, for write? (The Nautilus I used last
> had a cirled-over pen emblem for "no-write-access") Or maybe an image
> of a safe, or some kind of box?
> 
> Maybe just by pointing out the weirdness in using an image of a floppy
> disk I can get the creative gears spinning in peoples heads.

This is a standard gtk icon. If you feel it is a bad choice please file
a bug with gtk. I sort of agree but disagree with you. Basically over
time the floppy icon has come to mean save for a lot of users. It's not
perfect metaphor, but people seem to know it, so i see no reason to
really change it.


> 
> --
> 
> The other thing I wanted to suggest/ask might have been fixed in Gnome
> 2. If so, please forgive me. I have gnome-panel version 1.4.0.6 .
> 
> The issue is hitting the edge of the screen with my pointer. To use
> the menubar, I have to tap/click at just the right distance from the
> top of the screen (a range of a few pixels). Why not allow the user
> (luser, in my case... I've used GUIs for ten years but I still haven't
> learned to like WIMP-guis. The Ion wm is nice, though.) to click at
> the very top row of pixels? It's so much easier to hit.
> 
> Same goes for the task-list applet at the bottom.

This is called fitts law. We still have issues with realizing it in
gnome. There are open bugs for applets and panel that violate fitts law.
Currently the gnome menu panel does do a good job in honoring it though.

dave