[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#8482) heights in gtk2 production dialog

["Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa" <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8482 >

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004, Daniel Speyer wrote:

> Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa wrote:
>
> >I looked at your patch again and noticed it does not have a fixed row
> >height.
> >
> >The row height is fixed for a reason: if the size is fixed you can
> >predictably point and click at something without looking well at it.
>
> How are users supposed to do that?  The list is far to unstable (changes
> with every tech advance) for users to learn the physical location of
> common items.  Even if they could, those items are likely to require
> scrolling.  Scrolling isn't in multiples of line-height anyway.

I do it all the time. People do it all the time. Scrolling is in multiples
of page size if you want to. Having a common size and ordered layout makes
it easier to navigate a set of controls. I have tried this several times
with dialogs. Even the GNOME HIG says so.

> What makes it hard to click is massive areas of white space which are
> active with no clear clue as to which item they correspond to.  Any
> increase in height means more of these areas.  My patch minimizes height.
>
> What users are doing is clicking on icons with text labels.  The list is
> basically a sideways toolbar.  Most applications have items of various
> sizes on their toolbars, each taking up however much space they take.
> Per-unit spacing is within the rule of least surprise.

No. Toolbar buttons in the same group always have the same size action area.
Buttons are grouped semantically. Look at OpenOffice next time you use it.
Even the GIMP got toolbar button sizes of the same size.

Apps which do not do this are broken GUI design wise.

You are proposing to have controls with different areas of activation. But
this is not the worse. The worse is that there are possibly dozens of
controls in that list.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa