Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 2nd Aug 2009 20:12 UTC, submitted by kiddo
A common complaint about GNOME is that it has a certain fetish for icons. Menu entries, buttons - everything has an icon attached to it which often wastes space needlessly by making buttons larger than they need to be, as well as menus wider than they need to be. The good news (for me, at least) is that the next GNOME release will have all these icons removed.
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Member since:2005-06-29
How do other desktops handle this situation?
Windows 7 (probably Vista too, don't know about XP) uses no icons on buttons, but does use icons in menus every now and then.
From my article on menus:
http://www.osnews.com/story/20287/pt_IX_the_Menu
"There are more discussions concerning the design of menus. One of those is whether or not to use icons in menus. Apple's guidelines basically come down to "Please don't use icons in menus, only we are allowed to do that as we deem fit". Apple's argument is that users should be able to associate certain icons with actions, and by adding icons to every menu item, you hinder this process because the menus become too cluttered. Microsoft's Aero guidelines say more or less the same thing, but are far less strict, urging developers to only add icons for common actions, or icons that are already well established. "Cryptic icons aren't helpful, create visual clutter, and prevent users from focusing on the important menu items." GNOME's HIG appears to be mum on the issue."
The Linux world can read a lot from reading the Aero guidelines. There's a lot of good stuff in there.
Edited 2009-08-03 19:01 UTC
Member since:2007-02-11
Member since:2007-09-23
The Linux world can read a lot from reading the Aero guidelines. There's a lot of good stuff in there.
True.
I recently installed Windows 7 on my "desktop" computer (hooked to the TV and surround) and I have actually decided to move all my stuff to Windows now. Linux will still remain on the desktop but is gonna play a secondary role now.
I think that there's a lot of stuff in Windows 7 that Linux should learn from. Especially Aero.
There's still a few parts of Windows though that doesn't feel like it "fits" in with the rest of the system. I love consistency and there's always places in every desktop environment that doesn't fit in right.
I must say that I love the lack of icons. A word is also a picture in a way. You know that thing where you switch place of every letter in a word except for the last and the first and you can still read it? I don't "read" words, I recognize them. So using text-only on buttons and menus are not a problem and doesn't make it harder for me to find the right buttons.
I generally like reduced colors and distractions. A nice color theme, limited use of icons and really good looking fonts is the shit. Small and subtle visual goodies can be nice, such as a feeling of the text being somewhat engraved into the background in toolbars are nice for example, as long as it's very, very subtle.
Anyway, I welcome this move from Gnome.
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Member since:
2005-07-24
Then those people don't need to be twiddling with how to change exactly what the surface of the buttons look like. What's more, that group won't *want* to do so beyond selecting a theme. And if they are *really* daring, maybe even changing the color scheme to something other than the theme's default.
"""
Hi! I'm new to this forum and a complete newbie to computers, but I just *gotta* set the buttons in the widgets so that they have little icons in them in addition to the text!
"""
Nah... I don't think so.
How do other desktops handle this situation?
Edited 2009-08-03 18:03 UTC