Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?

From: Florian Limberger <flo_AT_snakeoilproductions.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:27:35 +0100

 Hello,

> The general consensus is that sprinkling icons everywhere actually
> makes the interface far more complicated and distracting, and
> generally quite *bad*. While there *are* some exceptions where icons
> are more compact, they are rare.
>
> Consider the meter widgets people are obsessed with putting on their
> status bars to tell you, say, the quality of your wifi signal. In 12
> horizontal pixels you can very comfortably fit in two digits, which
> would tell you the signal as a percentage. The same number of pixels
> would, as a meter, offer only an tenth of the information, and it
> would be far more difficult to distinguish 80% from 70%. Yes, text is
> quite a concise medium.

 then how do you distinguish the percentage of battery load and the
 percentage of wifi signal strength? Sometimes, I don't care if wifi
 signal quality is exactly 87% or 78%, It would suffice if I knew if it
 is over 25%, 50% or 75% ...
 Plus, I don't have to think about if I'm looking at my battery or my
 wifi status, thats something where pictures are a little bit better.
 If I denote the textual percentage with letters, it would cost me some
 pixels too, so I think thats a rather weak argument.
 But if you are paving the whole UI with icons, it gets confusing, but
 same applies to textual information, if you write a huge string with
 shitloads of information into your status bar, it would be confusing
 too.
 So I think, minimalism is the most important design goal, wether using
 icons or text to display information.
 But for a project like dwm, whose focus lies on a simple
 implementation,
 icons would be simply to complicated to include.

 By the way, I think the "general consensus" applies only to this
 mailing
 list, the rest of the world (sane or not) believes in some usability
 bonus.

 Greetings,

 flo
Received on Thu Dec 22 2011 - 16:27:35 CET