Re: [tdf-discuss] Can we replace "Floppy Disk"

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 11:06 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton
<dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote:
> Although not paying sufficient homage to the brilliant Umberto Eco, it would seem that having 
> good tool tips would matter for both the icons (which are often quite tiny) and for accessibility 
> reasons.  And the internationalization of the tool tips may be rather important.

Without having read the article: Don't forget that we are not talking
about icons in general here, but about toolbar-buttons.

The "what does it do" question of course requires a tooltip, that is
not the question, but a toolbar-button has a much more important
meaning than the metaphor behind:
* It saves place.
* You can distinguish images much faster than you can distinguish text
* after a while you don't even have to distinguish icons anymore, you
remember the position anyway, since you use the function so often,
look at the toolbar all the time.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what the icon depicts unless you can
clearly distinguish it from the other ones. As mentioned: Even when
people don't recognize the save-icon as a floppy, but as a TV - they
don't have any problem with associating "When I click on that button,
the documents gets saved".

The floppy-icon has the benefit of being used in other applications as
well, so when they know how to save in wordpad using the toolbar,
they'll know how to save in LO using the toolbar.

> It would also be good that the default arrangement of the icons not change, no matter what the 
> symbols/images are.

Exactly. Or better: Changing both the appearance as well as the
arrangement at the same time is a big no-no.

ciao
Christian

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