Dropping the "Interface" tab from appearance capplet

[Thomas Wood-2]

Hi,

It has been suggested that we remove the interface tab from the
Appearance capplet. This is for a number of reasons:

1) The tab mostly exposes bad design decisions

2) The tab page is fairly sparse and only contains three preferences


However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
"Text beside icons". My reasoning is:

1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
more room for actual content

2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
better fitts-law for these buttons.

3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
and text"

4) It seems to be more similar to other environments


A quick survey in the office seems to suggest the "text beside icons" is
the most popular choice for default.

Some people have expressed concern about removing the options without
properly testing applications with the new default. I personally have
*always* used text beside icons and haven't seen a problem. However, if
we make this change now, we can always revert the changes before release
if there are serious issues.

Regards,

Thomas

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[Dylan McCall]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It has been suggested that we remove the interface tab from the
> Appearance capplet. This is for a number of reasons:
>
> 1) The tab mostly exposes bad design decisions
>
> 2) The tab page is fairly sparse and only contains three preferences
>
>
> However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> "Text beside icons". My reasoning is:
>
> 1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
> more room for actual content
>
> 2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
> better fitts-law for these buttons.
>
> 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> and text"
>
> 4) It seems to be more similar to other environments
>
>
> A quick survey in the office seems to suggest the "text beside icons" is
> the most popular choice for default.
>
> Some people have expressed concern about removing the options without
> properly testing applications with the new default. I personally have
> *always* used text beside icons and haven't seen a problem. However, if
> we make this change now, we can always revert the changes before release
> if there are serious issues.
>
> Regards,
>
> Thomas

I definitely agree with this. Text beside icons is ideal, because
applications can still get text if they desire by marking certain items
as important, in case anybody is unaware :)
The particular style also generates far less visual clutter, and
conserves precious vertical space. (Now even more precious thanks to the
16:9 screen ratios). Also, with developers going through toolbar icons
and marking them as "important" or not, it has the side effect that they
may really think about what belongs in a toolbar.

However, I wonder what the thought is on editable menu shortcut keys? It
has never struck me as something particularly in the way, but it is an
awesome feature to have, at least for power users who like their
keyboard shortcuts. My favourite example is needing to perform one
function in Gnumeric MANY times while too lazy to figure out Macros, so
I mapped that function from the menu to F12 (originally I would have had
to dig into the menu each iteration) and finished the job easily,
without destroying my wrist.
Has anybody done usability testing on it?


Thanks,
Dylan

PS: This is out of scope and maybe a bit late given 3.0 is a few
releases away, but meanwhile, maybe the Interface tab could be replaced
with a tab to configure the panel. The process today is usability
impaired; one cannot get to panel properties, or add applets, without
right clicking.


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[Jens Granseuer]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It has been suggested that we remove the interface tab from the
> Appearance capplet.
[...]
> However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> "Text beside icons".

While I sort of disagree with your choice for the new default (for
reasons of personal preference only, I suspect) I very much agree with
the idea to remove the tab entirely. I'd have ripped it out much sooner
if I had been prepared to face the bloody mess that is bound to happen
in bugzilla afterwards. If you go ahead with this, I surely hope you'll
take that on as well.

Only half-joking,
Jens

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[Matthias Clasen-2]

I think the interface tab together with the windows capplet would make
a good nucleus for a tweakui style app, that we could ship separately.
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[Frederic Crozat]

Le mardi 28 juillet 2009 à 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> It has been suggested that we remove the interface tab from the
> Appearance capplet. This is for a number of reasons:
>
> 1) The tab mostly exposes bad design decisions
>
> 2) The tab page is fairly sparse and only contains three preferences

But relying on gconf-editor for those configuration options is clearly a
UI regression.

> However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> "Text beside icons". My reasoning is:
>
> 1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
> more room for actual content

And it will eat a LOT of horizontal space instead : applications are
often not confortable with 1024 width, it will be even worse.

> 2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
> better fitts-law for these buttons.

Longer text doesn't mean more important text (or I'm missing something).
And it doesn't always work in non-english languages.

> 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> and text"

I beg to differ on this.

Icon only is clearly not an option by default, since it is mostly for
"expert" or "powerusers". So, the only "by default" options are "icons
and text" and "text beside icons"

> 4) It seems to be more similar to other environments

A quick check on MacOS X seems to vote in favor of "text below icons"

> A quick survey in the office seems to suggest the "text beside icons" is
> the most popular choice for default.

I guess your survey was done on english systems, not on various
localized systems.

--
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Mandriva

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[William Jon McCann-3]

Hey,

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Matthias
Clasen<matthias.clasen@...> wrote:
> I think the interface tab together with the windows capplet would make
> a good nucleus for a tweakui style app, that we could ship separately.

Makes sense to me too.  I'm for removing both the interface tab and
the windows capplet.


Jon
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[Thomas Wood-2]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 12:21 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> I think the interface tab together with the windows capplet would make
> a good nucleus for a tweakui style app, that we could ship separately.

I agree with this, there are a few other options it might be nice to
expose in a tweakui app. Should we ship this as part of control center
though, or should it be a completely separate project?

Regards,

Thomas

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[Calum Benson]

On 28 Jul 2009, at 16:40, Thomas Wood wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It has been suggested that we remove the interface tab from the
> Appearance capplet. This is for a number of reasons:
>
> 1) The tab mostly exposes bad design decisions
>
> 2) The tab page is fairly sparse and only contains three preferences

Bummer, we were going to use the Appearance tab as a handy place to  
add a new feature to the next release of OpenSolaris, but hey-ho :)

> A quick survey in the office seems to suggest the "text beside  
> icons" is
> the most popular choice for default.

I'm also a fan of text-beside-icons, but would just say that when we  
made it the default in OpenSolaris 2008.11, we received several  
complaints about apps that didn't implement it properly-- i.e. didn't  
set the is-important property for any toolbar buttons at all.  In many  
cases, no tooltips were provided either, so there was literally no way  
to get a description of a toolbar button other than by switching to a  
different toolbar mode.  Consequently, we reverted to text-below-icons  
for our 2009.06 release.  (And we should probably have filed more  
upstream bugs at the time -- my bad.)

To that end, I also suggested a GNOME Goal to ensure all apps worked  
well with text-beside-icons mode, but since it's still languishing on  
the Proposals page, I presume it hasn't happened as yet.  And it  
wouldn't necessarily help us with the many non-core GNOME apps that we  
all like to use.

It would probably also greatly help developers if you could set  
tooltips and the is-important property for each button in Glade's  
toolbar editor, which you couldn't the last time I looked-- but that  
was in v3.4.5, and things may have moved on a bit since then...

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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[Matthias Clasen-2]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Calum Benson<Calum.Benson@...> wrote:

While we are looking at toolbars in applications, it would also be
nice to make sure that most of them have  a separate preference for
the toolbar style (defaulting to the system-wide setting), since
changing this setting is really mostly a question of familiarity with
the app, which means that the global setting doesn't really help much.
IIRC, the HIG recommends that too.

The HIG also recommends that toolbars are made optional, which might
be another thing worth looking at across apps.

Matthias
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[Calum Benson]

On 28 Jul 2009, at 17:21, Matthias Clasen wrote:

> I think the interface tab together with the windows capplet would make
> a good nucleus for a tweakui style app, that we could ship separately.

Perhaps... yet we've talked about just such an app since I started  
working on GNOME back in 2000, and possibly even before that, in which  
time I can vaguely remember about one effort in the distant past[1] to  
actually write one, which never really took off.

That would suggest to me that people generally aren't all that  
interested in having a tweakui app for GNOME, unless our user base now  
likes to tinker more than it used to... and if that's the case, it  
would be interesting to know why. [2]

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] http://gtweakui.sourceforge.net/index.php

[2] Okay, I just found out about http://ubuntu-tweak.com as well.  How  
many people use that?

--
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mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

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[Calum Benson]

On 28 Jul 2009, at 18:59, Matthias Clasen wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Calum Benson<Calum.Benson@...>  
> wrote:
>
> While we are looking at toolbars in applications, it would also be
> nice to make sure that most of them have  a separate preference for
> the toolbar style (defaulting to the system-wide setting), since
> changing this setting is really mostly a question of familiarity with
> the app, which means that the global setting doesn't really help much.
> IIRC, the HIG recommends that too.

It does indeed, although I'd be the first to admit that the current  
recommendation is perhaps a little clunky, which probably explains why  
only a couple of apps ever implemented it.

It's one of those things that developers really shouldn't have to  
worry about at all -- if you create a toolbar in your app, you ought  
to get the toolbar-controlling menu items for free.  But don't ask me  
how :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

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[Rodrigo Moya]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 17:54 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 12:21 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > I think the interface tab together with the windows capplet would make
> > a good nucleus for a tweakui style app, that we could ship separately.
>
> I agree with this, there are a few other options it might be nice to
> expose in a tweakui app. Should we ship this as part of control center
> though, or should it be a completely separate project?
>
we have the code in g-c-c already, so it seems to me a good idea to have
it in g-c-c, maybe with a better name (Interface? UI tweaks? ???)

Of course, that would be for next release, wouldn't it?


--
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[Thomas Wood-2]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 18:31 +0200, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> Le mardi 28 juillet 2009 à 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> > Hi,
[...]
> But relying on gconf-editor for those configuration options is clearly a
> UI regression.

Not really, when these options should not have been exposed in the first
place.

>
> > However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> > for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> > "Text beside icons". My reasoning is:
> >
> > 1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
> > more room for actual content
>
> And it will eat a LOT of horizontal space instead : applications are
> often not confortable with 1024 width, it will be even worse.

Not true, because only a few buttons will have labels. Most of the
toolbar buttons in this mode do not get labels.


>
> > 2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
> > better fitts-law for these buttons.
>
> Longer text doesn't mean more important text (or I'm missing something).
> And it doesn't always work in non-english languages.

My point was that only the important buttons get text and icons,
therefore the important buttons are larger than less important buttons.

>
> > 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> > and text"
>
> I beg to differ on this.
>
> Icon only is clearly not an option by default, since it is mostly for
> "expert" or "powerusers". So, the only "by default" options are "icons
> and text" and "text beside icons"

Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by looking at
tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I don't
remember where right now).

Regards,

Thomas

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[Thomas Wood-2]

On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 14:11 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > And it will eat a LOT of horizontal space instead : applications are
> > often not confortable with 1024 width, it will be even worse.
>
> Not true, because only a few buttons will have labels. Most of the
> toolbar buttons in this mode do not get labels.

In actual fact as an example, the Evolution AND Nautilus toolbars use
LESS SPACE when set to text-beside-icons as opposed to text-under-icons.

Regards,

Thomas

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[Frederic Crozat]

Le mercredi 29 juillet 2009 à 14:11 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 18:31 +0200, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> > Le mardi 28 juillet 2009 à 16:40 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> > > Hi,
> [...]
> > But relying on gconf-editor for those configuration options is clearly a
> > UI regression.
>
> Not really, when these options should not have been exposed in the first
> place.

Well, they have been for about 10 years and I'm expecting people to rely
on them. Until we have a "TweakUI" capplet in gnomecc (since it seems to
be what most people suggest, even if I'm not a fan), I would suggest we
keep it.

> > > However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> > > for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> > > "Text beside icons". My reasoning is:
> > >
> > > 1) This reduces the amount of vertical space uses in toolbars, allowing
> > > more room for actual content
> >
> > And it will eat a LOT of horizontal space instead : applications are
> > often not confortable with 1024 width, it will be even worse.
>
> Not true, because only a few buttons will have labels. Most of the
> toolbar buttons in this mode do not get labels.
>
>
> >
> > > 2) Important buttons are given a larger size than other buttons, meaning
> > > better fitts-law for these buttons.
> >
> > Longer text doesn't mean more important text (or I'm missing something).
> > And it doesn't always work in non-english languages.
>
> My point was that only the important buttons get text and icons,
> therefore the important buttons are larger than less important buttons.

Ok, I missed the GtkToolItem "is-important" API, in your proposal.

http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/GtkToolItem.html#gtk-tool-item-set-is-important

However, we have absolutely no idea if "is-important" is set correctly
in applications available in GTK+ ecosystem (I'm not restricting myself
on GNOME release on purpose).

And there is still a potential i18n issue, as I explained previously
(even if it is lower than I thought)

> > > 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> > > and text"
> >
> > I beg to differ on this.
> >
> > Icon only is clearly not an option by default, since it is mostly for
> > "expert" or "powerusers". So, the only "by default" options are "icons
> > and text" and "text beside icons"
>
> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by looking at
> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I don't
> remember where right now).

My experience with newbies is quite opposite : they have difficulties
with tooltips, as an help conveyor.

--
Frederic Crozat <fcrozat@...>
Mandriva

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[Rodrigo Moya]

On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 14:11 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:

> >
> > > 3) This seems to be a good compromise between "icons only" and "icons
> > > and text"
> >
> > I beg to differ on this.
> >
> > Icon only is clearly not an option by default, since it is mostly for
> > "expert" or "powerusers". So, the only "by default" options are "icons
> > and text" and "text beside icons"
>
> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by looking at
> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I don't
> remember where right now).
>

I thought the real relationship that make users distinguish toolbar
icons is the icon itself, which is the same as in the menu. But we are
getting no icons now in menus also, right?


--
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo@...>

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[Calum Benson]

On 29 Jul 2009, at 14:11, Thomas Wood wrote:

> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by  
> looking at
> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I  
> don't
> remember where right now).

Jared Spool, amongst many others, has studied the efficiency of icon
+text vs icon-alone vs text-alone over the years, and this post nicely  
summarises his findings (which ties in with other studies I've read,  
but this was the first that came to hand):

<http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2009/06/28/old-news-about-icons/>

Note: 'text+image' in this context means 'an icon with a label', not  
'an icon with a tooltip' --  I don't recall where icon+tooltip falls  
on the scale, but it's not at the top due to the greater interaction  
effort required to reveal tooltips.

Such research, indeed, was the basis on which our current default was  
chosen :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
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mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

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[Alberto Ruiz-4]

2009/7/29 Calum Benson <Calum.Benson@...>:

>
> On 29 Jul 2009, at 14:11, Thomas Wood wrote:
>
>> Again, "icons only" cannot possibly be an expert option. Toolbars are
>> supposed to be for commonly used commands, which you learn by looking at
>> tooltips (I think there are studies available to prove this, but I don't
>> remember where right now).
>
> Jared Spool, amongst many others, has studied the efficiency of icon+text vs
> icon-alone vs text-alone over the years, and this post nicely summarises his
> findings (which ties in with other studies I've read, but this was the first
> that came to hand):
>
> <http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2009/06/28/old-news-about-icons/>
>
> Note: 'text+image' in this context means 'an icon with a label', not 'an
> icon with a tooltip' --  I don't recall where icon+tooltip falls on the
> scale, but it's not at the top due to the greater interaction effort
> required to reveal tooltips.

Well, besides the tooltip issue. I do find something remarkable, it
says that obvious icons means obvious actions and vice-versa. I wonder
if the rule of thum here is non-obvious actions shouldn't be in the
toolbar in the first place, they probably belong to the menu, and if
they don't, well, is-important to the rescue!

Now, the study on the other hand, doesn't measure the impact of
wasting useful space against the impact of not maximizing the useful
area of the app. One could argue that making first timers experience a
little harder, to improve the long term use of the app (using those
pixels for content and not for chrome) is worth it, specially having
into account today's screen sizes (widscreen laptops, netbooks...)

Overall, even with that study into account, I think we are doing the
right thing here, and I couldn't be more happy that Thomas has taken
this bullet in the right direction!

> Such research, indeed, was the basis on which our current default was chosen
> :)
>
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>
> --
> CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
> mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
> http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]
>
> Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
>
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--
Un saludo,
Alberto Ruiz
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[Benjamin Otte]

> However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> "Text beside icons".
>
Just looking at all the applications I use and their use, I'd argue that a default setting seems like an impossible thing to do:
- Nautilus uses the desktop default, but there's a move to make it take less space
- File-Roller has 2 toolbars; 1 using the default setting, 1 using text beside icons
- Inkscape uses icons only
- Firefox uses icons only
- Epiphany uses desktop default, but I've customized it to look like Firefox
- GIMP uses icons only (ok, it's not a real toolbar, it's a tool palette)
- Glade uses the desktop default
- Abiword uses icons only
- Gnumeric uses icons only
- Evince uses the desktop default
- Eye of GNOME uses the desktop default
- Baobab uses the desktop default (but fails to change when you set the GConf key, bad Baobab)
- GEdit uses the desktop default
- Transmission uses the desktop default
- Totem (if I may include this) uses icons only
I'm not aware of anyone but Epiphany allowing customization of this.

From this data I  categorized applications into 3 types:
- applications with lots of toolbars
These applications (like Abiword or Inkscape) have a lot of icons. THey ignore the default setting and use "icons only", probably to reduce the screen space taken by the toolbar(s).
- browser-like applications
These applications (like Nautilus or Firefox) try to reduce the chrome as much as possible to have more space available for content. They tend to have one toolbar at the top that often includes an as-large-as-possible item, like the location or path bar. These applications also hardcode "icons only", probably to reduce the space taken by the toolbar, as the main area the user is interacting with is usually not the toolbar icons, but the content area or the location/path bar.
- small applications
These applications (like File-Roller or Evince) usually use the default setting (which is "text below icons"). To me, this feels like a good choice, as I rarely use these applications and don't remember their usage well. Also, the meanings of the icons are often not obvious to me (case in point: file-roller). Also, almost all interaction with these applications is in the form of clicking toolbar icons - EOG and Evince don't do anything but support copying there.

So I agree that the setting is useless and should be removed.
However, I do not agree on changing the default. Changing the default would only affect the "small applications" category, but I would need to relearn the meaning of the icons for them, I would lose the bit of familiarity I already have with these applications as the toolbars would suddenly all look different) and most of the applications don't yet handle the marking of icons as important.
What I would do instead is get rid of the notion of a "default" and suggest to application authors to use the toolbar style that best fits the usage of the toolbars. And then I'd suggest extending the HIG and/or the API documentation to clarify the intended meanings.

Cheers,
Benjamin

PS: This mail is all your fault for blogging about it :p

[Benjamin Otte]

Thomas Wood wrote:
> However, before we remove the tab, I suggest we fix the default option
> for the toolbar styles. I would like to see the default setting being
> "Text beside icons".
>
Just looking at all the applications I use and their use, I'd argue
that a default setting seems like an impossible thing to do:
- Nautilus uses the desktop default, but there's a move to make it
take less space
- File-Roller has 2 toolbars; 1 using the default setting, 1 using
text beside icons
- Inkscape uses icons only
- Firefox uses icons only
- Epiphany uses desktop default, but I've customized it to look like Firefox
- GIMP uses icons only (ok, it's not a real toolbar, it's a tool palette)
- Glade uses the desktop default
- Abiword uses icons only
- Gnumeric uses icons only
- Evince uses the desktop default
- Eye of GNOME uses the desktop default
- Baobab uses the desktop default (but fails to change when you set
the GConf key, bad Baobab)
- GEdit uses the desktop default
- Transmission uses the desktop default
- Totem (if I may include this) uses icons only
I'm not aware of anyone but Epiphany allowing customization of this.

From this data I  categorized applications into 3 types:
- applications with lots of toolbars
These applications (like Abiword or Inkscape) have a lot of icons.
THey ignore the default setting and use "icons only", probably to
reduce the screen space taken by the toolbar(s).
- browser-like applications
These applications (like Nautilus or Firefox) try to reduce the chrome
as much as possible to have more space available for content. They
tend to have one toolbar at the top that often includes an
as-large-as-possible item, like the location or path bar. These
applications also hardcode "icons only", probably to reduce the space
taken by the toolbar, as the main area the user is interacting with is
usually not the toolbar icons, but the content area or the
location/path bar.
- small applications
These applications (like File-Roller or Evince) usually use the
default setting (which is "text below icons"). To me, this feels like
a good choice, as I rarely use these applications and don't remember
their usage well. Also, the meanings of the icons are often not
obvious to me (case in point: file-roller). Also, almost all
interaction with these applications is in the form of clicking toolbar
icons - EOG and Evince don't do anything but support copying there.

So I agree that the setting is useless and should be removed.
However, I do not agree on changing the default. Changing the default
would only affect the "small applications" category, but I would need
to relearn the meaning of the icons for them, I would lose the bit of
familiarity I already have with these applications as the toolbars
would suddenly all look different) and most of the applications don't
yet handle the marking of icons as important.
What I would do instead is get rid of the notion of a "default" and
suggest to application authors to use the toolbar style that best fits
the usage of the toolbars. And then I'd suggest extending the HIG
and/or the API documentation to clarify the intended meanings.

Cheers,
Benjamin

PS: This mail is all your fault for blogging about it :p
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