(Can I talk about UI?) Column headers vs content alignment

Rick York

Don't sweat it. Guidelines are just someone else's opinion.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Jeremy Falcon

Yes, but the opinion of a UX expert writing said guidelines should at least hold some weight say against that of a gardener or a meth dealer. :laugh:

Jeremy Falcon

Jeremy Falcon

Maximilien wrote:

This is one of the rare UI that will not be configurable

Don't forget the read only checkbox they can't uncheck that says make this not configurable. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Jeremy Falcon

jeron1

Maximilien wrote:

rare UI that will not be configurable

.....until the afternoon before the scheduled release date. :)

"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle

kmoorevs

:thumbsup:+5 for mentioning this! I used to look forward to the weekly surveys. :)

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"

DerekT P

Then make sure to make the number of weekday columns configurable, for when we (finally) narrow down the week to 3 days (yes, I do remember the 1970s); but allow for up to 10 days, for when we decimalise the calendar.

Telegraph marker posts ... nothing to do with IT Phasmid email discussion group ... also nothing to do with IT Beekeeping and honey site ... still nothing to do with IT

RedDk

I've been thinking about this and I'd categorically tell anyone asking about justifying text that would ultimately be copied and pasted, left justify it. Because of the use but also because of the westwardness of things in general. On a lighter note: A Zoo visiter walks past the front gate of Jack Hanna's Imperial Animal Venue and approaching the docent at the first water attraction he comes across, gazing with astonishment at the creature wallowing in the shallows below the fence, says to him "That is the strangest reptile I've ever seen" to which the docent points to the shingle hanging above and says "That's the world's meanest orneriest lizard and it's called a Crockagator, hence the sign". The visitor reads the title of the sign and steps a couple feet closer to read the finer print beneath the bold letters and says out loud "Two-headed beast: one end the mouth of an alligator, on the other end the mouth of crocadile". He kinda scratches his head for a moment and thinks to himself then says to the docent "I see ... two heads, must be very hard to feed and eats a lot to boot. But what makes him so beastly"? To which the docent replies: "If you had a mouth on one end of you and another mouth on the other end of you, you'd be mighty beastly too.

charlieg

that right there. leave it up to the user, but default to centering. Better yet, add some data collection to see what users actually like. I've been a long proponent for this, as I think the vast majority of features are rarely used. I'm thinking Word, Excel, most of the Windows desktop, applications and systems I've written, etc.

Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.

PJ Arends

Quote:

should at least hold some weight say against that of a gardener or a meth dealer

I will just keep my opinions to myself then

Within you lies the power for good - Use it!

rob tillaart

Have you considered rotating 90 degrees? So the weekdays form column one etc.

Rick York

I give them no more weight than that gardener. I used to ask our cleaning lady for UI suggestions and got some great ones from her. We had to deal with a lot of non-computer savvy operators and she was the perfect person to ask since everyone else around was experienced. This so-called expert probably just read a few books and there is a high probability that I (and you) have more experience dealing with actual UIs than they do.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Jeremy Falcon

That's an assumption... Devs deal with UI on a technical level, but most devs I know don't even know jack about CSS, for instance. They lie and pretend to, but they don't know anything about it. It's all ego and arrogance and fear and more of the nonsensical lies that fills our industry when a typical dev says they know it, but then they can't tell you the difference between pixel value and point value. A good dev should be able to with _with_ UX about new toys available, but that doesn't make the devs an expert of all things UX (not the same as UI). I consider myself pretty good at UX theory (not the best at all) and I know for a fact I've talked to more non-devs/users about the experience. And a good UX person will; a bad one won't. Most good UX peeps or marketing peeps I know love to chat about ideas and they speak to users way more than a dev with zero social skills. It's always a dev that argues about everything petty little thing (like this). Which I would argue makes devs much less qualified to find out what people really want. But, that goes for any role... like the aforementioned devs. And while you can consider a gardener an end user, the chance he/she talks to a larger sample size about an application is all but zero. Which means, it's statically invalid in and of itself. But someone who has a much larger sample size at least has a better chance of getting it "right". As in, you _should_ talk to a gardener as an end user and get their feedback, but you don't see that gardener going around talking to other end users as much as you would see that with someone who's job it is. Again, they have to be good at their job, but that goes for any role. Plenty of devs out there suck too and lack the self-awareness to see that.

Jeremy Falcon

bryanren

To recover some screen space. Abbreviate the DoW to 3 letters - and even more questionable, rotate the DoW header text to 45 or 90 degrees. And centered. Then, just be evile, put the tab order of the fields going top-bottom then left to right. /s b

jochance

I feel like you're giving right-align short shrift for no good reason.

Bud Staniek

*Always* center-align columns of standalone checkboxes. The Budster

Stacy Dudovitz

Why not allow it to be configurable? Default perhaps to center aligned, and right click mouse button to select left/center(/right?). To really answer this question, best to get feedback from QA/alpha/beta testers methinks?

thewazz

You don't know my meth dealer.

Mark Starr

Center align as the first stab, but run it by Marketing and the stakeholders before rolling it out. Also, if you're replacing something or if there are other interfaces in the app, make sure it's consistent. :)

Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events. - Manly P. Hall Mark Just another cog in the wheel

Jeremy Falcon

Ha ha ha. Touché

Jeremy Falcon

DGrothe PhD

center-align looks better for me.