On Jun 2, 2007, at 12:52 PM, Alan Horkan wrote: > > On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Caleb Marcus wrote: > ... >> I'd like to suggest that the GNOME HIG recommend including clear >> buttons next to search boxes that change the current view. I've >> attached a screenshot of an example of one of these, from Mozilla >> Thunderbird. When the user starts typing in the find-as-you-type box, >> the red "X" button appears in the right side of the search box. When >> clicked, it clears the text in the search box and resets the view back >> to normal. > ... > I'm not sure I see a compelling reason to provide an alternative to > backspace/delete for ordinary users. > ...
Because for many if not most search fields, people frequently want to clear the contents -- either to enter a new search, or to return a list to its unfiltered state. That is true much less often for text fields that aren't search fields (the most prominent exception being a Web browser's address field). The issue of special-casing search fields has also recently come up in the design of HTML 5. <http://urlx.org/lists.whatwg.org/3711a> Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
