Re: [Usability]toolbar icons/text

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 06Aug2002 02:56PM (-0700), snickell stanford edu wrote:
> 
> There are essentially two camps where toolbars are concerned: the "make
> it so most users would never have to touch a menu if they didn't want
> to" camp exemplified by Microsoft Office and the "make toolbars a
> shortcut for the several most common items" camp exemplified by many Mac
> OS/X applications. Since I have a feeling most GNOME people wouldn't be
> thrilled with the latter (I would, but its hard to convince people to
> only have 5 or 6 toolbar items), priority text provides a nifty
> compromise. Show the other items but provide a mechanism (the text) for
> highlighting the most important items.

I think a better solution is to start with relatively few toolbar
items (8-9 is OK) and have a customize toolbar option. That way you
start with only the most common shortcuts that all users care about,
and everyone can add their favorites.
 
> The disadvantage of priority text relative to text+icons is obviously
> that you don't have immediate text access to all toolbar items. But
> since text is probably most relevant to new users of applications, who
> are probably going to be most interested in priority-text icons (that
> is, if they are chosen well), this may not be such a loss.

If the items useful to new users are scattered among unlabelled items
that are not useful to new users, then it will be much harder for new
users to find what they want, defeating the purpose of the toolbar as
a place for important shortcuts.

Incidentally, there are many apps on OS X where I almost never have to
open the menus, even though they have relatively few toolbar items.

Regards,

Maciej