[Pmwiki-users] link icons

Jason Grossman Jason.Grossman
Wed Jul 21 19:20:57 CDT 2004


Christian Ridderstr?m <chr at home.se> wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Kass Lloyd wrote:
>
>> An icon is a bit more visual then a ? link, and would help people who
>> are new to wikis know whats going on easier.
>
> I might be conservative here, but I don't really think icons are always
> easier to understand.

You're not just being conservative.  There's a large literature on this 
issue (a google search on "user interface guidelines" would find some 
of it), and a lot of it agrees with your point - icons not generally 
easier to understand ... although they are SOMETIMES, in situations 
which have been described in detail in the literature.  In fact, if I 
remember correctly, practically all of the user interface design 
literature agrees that icons representing actions are not usually a 
good idea.  (Catie or John, can you confirm that?)  For example, the 
"TOG on interface" web site says this.

Jason G.




More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list