Re: a nice touch from kde's kicker

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Josh Steiner wrote:
> 
> http://www.kde.org/screenshots/large/kde3-snapshot1.jpg
> 
> I just wanted to throw this little piece of food for though out there, I
> really like the way that in this screenshot kicker puts the program icons
> on a separate background color than the text, this seems to make the menu
> more readable to my eye.  What do people think of this from a useability
> standpoint?

I don't think it works, personally... it completely breaks the
relationship between the icon and the associated text, IMHO.  If any
sort of extra visual effect is needed in menus (and I'm not convinced
that it is), something like the subtle grey/white horizontal stripes we
have in lists and trees these days would probably work better, as that
would be more likely to reinforce the relationship between each icon and
its text.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems