Re: Layout of Dialog (screen resolutions, font sizes etc)
"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@flounder.com> wrote in message
news:32ijf2dr92u4kcp86ma6vng8b5bh60mvjf@4ax.com...
Alan Kay pointed out that a lot of the interfaces we take for granted in
Windows, such as
the caption bar, menus, close box, etc. were developed by his group at
Xerox PARC for the
SmallTalk system, which he says "was designed for pre-literate children
who had no ability
to read words". He says he continues to be amused at how much this has
permeated the
culture, and furthermore, how it is dismissed as being "too complex".
Don't confuse font sizes with interface mechanisms. Font sizes have to be
under control
of the user so that textual data is readable. One of the most unusable
programs Microsoft
has right now is FrontPage, which has no way to increase the font size at
design time.
Working on my Web pages is becoming quite painful (literally; I have to
sit in a position
that maximizes physical discomfort just so I can be close enough to the
screen--about 12
inches--to read the font). Font sizes belong to the user. In fact, the
Microsoft
usability guidelines say exactly this.
Well, first you belittle the Xerox PARC designs, then you tout Microsoft's
usability guidelines which describe them. Ahem. Anyway... when the font
designers pick a point size at design time, then author the font to look
optimum at that size, you can't really fault UI designers from wanting to
make the font look it's best. And some fonts decrease readability as you
make them larger because the eye can't gasp the entire character cell as
easily. Further, I'm sure you've seen that for a given point size,
different fonts have different subjective readability. So your point that
the designers can easily choose the font face but not the font size isn't
really true.
And making it even more untrue is that the whole point of a good UI is to
grasp relevant info at a glance. To make the info available at a glance,
you need to optimize layout, and for that, you need to know what will fit on
the screen at one time and what won't. Letting the user select the font
size puts them in control of what will fit, and that destroys the whole
point of optimizing layout. If that level of optimization is important, and
for some applications, it is very important, then the designer needs to have
control over the font size, or control over the app window size, or both.
What would destroy a great design is to introduce scrolling data. Scrolling
data is NOT relevant info at a glance.
It is clear that Microsoft has never done a usability study with
developers, or we would
not have the abomination which is the VS.NET IDE.
They probably did do usability studies, but did not care what the VC6
programmers said. The Visual InterDev and Visual J++ people got a lot more
say.
-- David