[Phpwm] Icons

[Darren Beale]

> Just wondered what other people do for this sort of thing - Keep it a
> bit utilitarian but highly functional or prettify it and slow it all down
a
> bit?

Slowing it down is a red herring; bandwidth is cheap.

Whilst I am most certainly not an information or interface designer as a
blanket summation I'd say that where I've seen icons for menu items then the
first few - at best - work well and then after that it seems that the rest
have been shoe-horned to fit something that only the developer could see
made any sense. 

The worst case of something like this is the *spit* php-nuke type summary
admin screen with a bucket load of icons which apparently mean something,
but only if you sit down and try to figure it out; it's like icon soup.

I take the tool tip 'title' point, but still it makes me think and when
using the interface that's bad.

As Rob says, text all the way. The good designers I've worked with use
graphical elements elsewhere; menu items are descriptive and don't use
arbitrary images. Where images are used in the interface (e.g. a trashcan
for delete, an arrow for next) then it is blatantly obvious what their
purpose is.


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