I'm going to tweak the lozenge a tiny bit more, along the lines of
what Jeremy suggested to make it look less like the dotted lines.
I think where I'm getting caught up with this convention is that I
believe it's really a second-order form of visual feedback for
selection. If we had no other means of conveying selection/focus, it
would be unacceptable for us to appropriate the dotted outline for
anything other than selection. However, in-the-context of having a
more in-your-face way to communicate selection, the dotted outline
fades into the background.
e.g. Thunderbird also has a dotted outline to communicate selection
in the sidebar. But do you notice the dotted outline; OR Do you
notice the highlight color?
In the end, I agree with you that this is not a make or break it
issue precisely because the dotted outline is not the definitive, the-
same-in-all-contexts way to visually communicate selection.
I will be posting a final round with a palette soon.
Thx! Mimi :o)
On May 2, 2006, at 11:10 AM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:
Mimi Yin wrote:
This primarily because traditionally in web UIs, there is NO
notion of focus (except for for text fields). So in order to use
the keyboard, browsers needed to come up with visual feedback to
tell the user where the keyboard focus was at all times. In other
words, the dotted outline was created to compensate for a lack in
web UIs.
Actually, there's a pretty well-established idea of focus for all
types of form elements in Web UIs that goes back pretty far. (Just
as an example, the JavaScript 'onFocus' method was originally
implented back in JavaScript 1.0 -- circa Netscape 2.0, in 1995.)
In fact, Internet Explorer always had a lot of issues with using
form elements on z-indexed layers because the browser actually used
the Windows system widgets (i.e., select boxes, radio buttons and
so on) for form elements (which made them always show on top of
everything else). Focus in IE behaves the same way as it does in
the OS -- same dotted selection/focus lines.
Given that, I think I'm comfortable muddling with this web
convention a bit and using our own visual syntax to communicate
focus. I think for most things, the dotted outline is actually
too subtle to capture your attention. On a crowded calendar
filled with lozenges, I'm not sure I could locate the dotted
outline very easily.
Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't break with convention, but it's
not really just a Web convention. Putting a dotted line around
something to indicate focus or a selection is pretty universal --
e.g., the 'marching ants' in Photoshop, the dotted selection
rectangle around selected folders and files in Windows Explorer, etc.
If we can think of something else equally effective to indicate
'tentative' that doesn't conflict with something that pervasive, it
would be less confusing to end-users, IMO. However if we are tapped
out of ideas, I don't believe it would cause so much consternation
as to make the app unusable. I don't think we'll see people
freaking out an protesting in the streets that their tentative
events look selected. :)
Matthew
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
