Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Text and / or Icons on Buttons / Toolbar

[Frederic Gurr <frederic.gurr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have never missed icons on buttons in the preferences dialog or
similar dialogs (e.g. run configurations, etc). For me, they would not
add any value. Buttons would need to be wider or taller to be able to
fit in the icons, which would take away valuable screen area in a lot of
already crowded dialogs.

I did not dig too deep, but I could not find any dialog with buttons
that have icons (I'm happy to be proven wrong ;) ). So I assume that
this is the default UI/UX convention for buttons in dialogs. Someone
else probably knows if it's an actual rule or only a common practice. In
any case, I like the consistency of it. Having icons only on a few
buttons would feel incomplete, especially since plugins can contribute
dialogs.

More of a general problem (but it would multiply with a rule to add
icons to buttons): icons should be taken from the same icon set or have
at least the same style and it's going to be hard to find unique icons
for some of the buttons (e.g. "Use system font", "Go to default", etc).

There are a lot of other places in the Eclipse IDE UI where Icons a
perfectly fine, but not in dialogs, IMHO.

Regards,

Fred

On 25.09.19 11:45, Becker, Matthias wrote:
> Dear Eclipse experts,
> 
>  
> 
> today I had a discussion with co-workers and I also want your feedback
> on that topic.
> 
> It’s about Text and/or Icons on (Standard) Buttons:
> 
>  
> 
> Today we see a lot of dialogs in Eclipse where we have buttons that only
> have text but no icons.
> 
> On example is Platforms “Available Update Sites” preference page.
> 
>  
> 
> There we have Add, Remove, Edit, … on the right hand side of the table.
> 
> Btw: Should the “Edit” button not be “Edit…”?
> 
>  
> 
> Also JDT’s “Change Method Signature” refactoring dialog has a similar
> pattern:
> 
>  
> 
> In contrast to that let’s have a look at the “Rebase Interactive” view
> from EGIT:
> 
>  
> 
> Here we also have buttons. But they all have icons and in addition they
> have text below the icons. I find the UI design of the interactive
> rebase view really good. The “first time users” (that maybe
> 
> don’t know the meaning of some icons) can directly read the text (and
> don’t need to hover with the mouse) and will (maybe) learn the icons.
> In addition there’s a context menu and we have key binding for the
> various actions.
> 
>  
> 
> Let’s have a look at an additional location of icons and text. The
> perspective switcher:
> 
> Here we also have Icons and text (but not on the right hand side) by
> default but the “power user” can switch the text off.
> 
>  
> 
> What’s the reason for not having icons on the other locations? The Add,
> Remove, Up, Down and Edit buttons could also get icons (that already
> either already exist in Eclipse or are known by “everybody” from every
> day’s life).
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Matthias
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
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-- 
Frederic Gurr
Release Engineer | Eclipse Foundation Europe GmbH

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