It's just true, that's all...
It's just true, that's all...
Posted Oct 26, 2007 5:07 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753)In reply to: It's just true, that's all... by khim
Parent article: New Desktop Face-Off: Gnome 2.20 vs KDE 3.5 (O'ReillyNet)
Default skin, order of buttons, things like that. KDE is much closer to Windows in look-and-feel then GNOME.
Ah yes, the order of buttons. Is there any sane explanation of why Gnome reverses the order of OK and Cancel (and other similar cases) compared to Windows (actually compared to the "CUA" guidelines that came from IBM back in the 1980's; note that OS/2 and Motif also act similarly)? To me, this looks like a case of doing things petulantly differently, just for the sake of being different.
Posted Oct 26, 2007 7:40 UTC (Fri)
by midg3t (guest, #30998)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 7:54 UTC (Fri)
by njs (subscriber, #40338)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 9:32 UTC (Fri)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
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As this is something that can be plausibly argued both ways, the best way is simply what is the most common existing practice. I personally find having these two conventions a nuisance, because I almost daily need to deal with the other OS, not to mention that on the Linux desktop, programs often disagree with each other, depending on their pedigree. In GUI's, being consistent beats most other usability issues. Gnome has done free desktop systems a huge disservice here.
Posted Oct 26, 2007 10:07 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 10:12 UTC (Fri)
by alexl (subscriber, #19068)
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Posted Oct 27, 2007 16:45 UTC (Sat)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 14:34 UTC (Fri)
by aigarius (subscriber, #7329)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 23:30 UTC (Fri)
by njs (subscriber, #40338)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 18:29 UTC (Fri)
by tjc (guest, #137)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 20:30 UTC (Fri)
by ajross (guest, #4563)
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Posted Oct 26, 2007 23:53 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Oct 27, 2007 0:06 UTC (Sat)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
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ltr / rtl
You get used to the positive action being on the bottom right pretty quickly.
I doubt there was ever a conscious decision just "to be different".
It's just true, that's all...
>Is there any sane explanation of why Gnome reverses the order of OK and Cancel (and other
similar cases) compared to Windows (actually compared to the "CUA" guidelines that came from
IBM back in the 1980's; note that OS/2 and Motif also act similarly)?
A bit of quick googling ("gnome button order rationale") reveals: "The eyes of people who read
left-to-right tend towards the upper-left and lower-right corners of boxes. Therefore the
action the user is most likely to perform should be located in the lower-right corner. With
this button order, the action the user is most likely to perform is always in the same place
and is always the most noticeable."
(http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/proposals/dialog....)
I would hope they have empirical data to back this up, as they have gathered empirical data on
other HIG-related things, but don't actually know either way. Intuitively, their way does
make more sense to me; it is certainly easiest to find the corner button with one's eyes, so
it's a good place for the most important information.
FWIW, OS X is like Gnome here. I'm not sure I'd cite Motif as a paragon of UI design.
I would draw exactly the opposite conclusion here: If you read left-to-right,
the first button you will read is the leftmost one.
Button order and consistency
Button order and consistency
Surely this kind of thing should depend on the writing system in use. For right-to-left
languages you'd want to lay out the dialogue box the other way round, as is done for menus.
Given that fact, it should be possible to make it an arbitrary system-wide choice and either
change the KDE order to match GNOME, or change the GNOME order to match KDE.
Button order and consistency
Have you ever used gnome in a right-to-left language?
It automatically mirrors the whole UI, including where buttons are placed. So, in that case
the affirmative button is always to the left.
Button order and consistency
Yes - that's the point I was making - since the button placement is dynamic (it has to be, to
support right-to-left languages) it should be pretty simple to make it a configurable choice.
Then both KDE and GNOME can be configured the same way system-wide.
Button order and consistency
<quote>I would draw exactly the opposite conclusion here: If you read left-to-right, the first
button you will read is the leftmost one.</quote>
Not true. What was left out and assumed to be obvious is the fact that buttons are in the
bottom row of the dialogs. Therefore if we compare the dialog to a page of text, then a person
trying to skip-over the dialog would naturally focus his attention in a diagonal pattern from
top-right corner to bottom-left corner. He will be hesitant to perform any action before such
scan is complete. From that perspective the last thing the user sees is the most important
part of the window.
Button order and consistency
>As this is something that can be plausibly argued both ways, ...
Very true.
> ...the best way is simply what is the most common existing practice.
That can be argued both ways :-).
Anyway, every possible argument has been hashed to death about this; simpler to read the old
gnome mailing list archives than to recreate them here.
It's just true, that's all...
FWIW, OS X is like Gnome here.
I'm not an Apple historian, but I'm pretty sure it's the other way around.
It's just true, that's all...
Gnome predates OS X by about 4-5 years. I don't know what the button order standards were on
MacOS Classic.
Same as on OS X, I never noticed a difference there. Examples abound.
It's just true, that's all...
It's just true, that's all...
The button orders changed between GNOME 1 and GNOME 2, and MacOS X was
explicitly cited as precedent for the change in the button-order
discussions on the gnome lists.
