luebking wrote:"me being one of them"
Hehe, just checked colomars profile for the first time

Yeah I know, I'm sneaky with my nickname not having any connection to my real name

The (Breeze) style can easily force another dropdown mode on polishing the icons from "QToolButton::DelayedPopup" to "QToolButton::MenuButtonPopup"

Does that mean the interaction changes as well, or only the visual representation?

A problem could be when QToolButton is used in special contexts (LxQt taskbar etc.) where a delayed popup (activate first window or show window list) might actually make sense.

I don't think the delayed popup ever makes more sense than a proper split button.

Does that mean the interaction changes as well, or only the visual representation?

The button type changes - there's no difference in whether the style or the application set this attribute. It will be a "real" split button.

luebking wrote:

Does that mean the interaction changes as well, or only the visual representation?

The button type changes - there's no difference in whether the style or the application set this attribute. It will be a "real" split button.

Sneaky!

Please be aware that this is not 100% foolproof - the application can of course set the type (back) at some later point.
In that case one case to figure whether one wants to run into a race about this or simply give up.

luebking wrote:Please be aware that this is not 100% foolproof - the application can of course set the type (back) at some later point.
In that case one case to figure whether one wants to run into a race about this or simply give up.

If application developers want to violate the HIG, they can do so at any point, anyway. They are not the law.

ken300 wrote:Just my own opinion, but having the arrows stretching the full height of the icon makes it crystal clear that it performs an action on the whole list and not just one or two of the entries in it. To my mind these quickly bodged icons convey 'reorder the whole list' a little better:


And I'm not sure that there is a right or wrong answer to this (I suspect that it's just down to your own opinions), but to my mind 'Ascending' would describe the higher value being at the top and 'Descending' would be for the other way round but i can see the argument for them being the way round shown in andreas_k's post too!

BTW - Apologies, never having worked with icons before, i tried scaling the above image so each icon was 22x22 & they looked all blurry & rubbish so decided to post them at the size above.

By coincidence or not, the above design is exactly what BB10 has:



(they just have no separate ascending/descending versions, while we need it)

Long arrows indicate the entire list is sorted, which is good.

Later proposal in this thread uses short arrow:

When asked, users may understand the arrow points to a certain list item instead for some reason, don't you think?

Although I'm not keen about using text on icons specially these since they're small, here's ascending and descending with type using the Oxygen font. And the arrows are noticeably different than the widget next to them.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Although I'm not keen on use text on icons specially these since they're small, here's ascending and descending with type using the Oxygen font. And the arrows are noticeably different than the widget next to them.

Cool and modern! The arrow is now distinct, cannot be confused with the drop-down indicator anymore. Good job!

jstaniek said:
By coincidence or not, the above design is exactly what BB10 has:

It's coincidence - honest! No, really.

But, IMO both the above type of icon and the one that Uri has just posted in his mockup BOTH convey 'change the way the list is sorted' just as well for alphabetical lists.

The only real advantages of the above one that looks a tiny bit like the BB10 icon is that it might make more sense than the 'A-Z' icon when it's used to change the order of a list that's not alphabetical (if we want it to be suitable for that as well which i'm guessing we do), and I think it works better at smaller sizes.

I don't know how it works but would there be any copyright issues with going for icons that look similar to those used in BB10, Windows etc...?

ken300 wrote:

jstaniek said:
By coincidence or not, the above design is exactly what BB10 has:

It's coincidence - honest! No, really.

But, IMO both the above type of icon and the one that Uri has just posted in his mockup BOTH convey 'change the way the list is sorted' just as well for alphabetical lists.

The only real advantages of the above one that looks a tiny bit like the BB10 icon is that it might make more sense than the 'A-Z' icon when it's used to change the order of a list that's not alphabetical (if we want it to be suitable for that as well which i'm guessing we do), and I think it works better at smaller sizes.

I don't know how it works but would there be any copyright issues with going for icons that look similar to those used in BB10, Windows etc...?

From my non-lawyer experience, not at all, prior art for concepts is near-impossible to catch here, and a PR disaster in a 'suing own mother' manner. Unless there's a trademark. And BB10's idea isn't particularly new, just mentioned it as a use in a mainstream product. What I also wanted to show is that number of different approaches is limited.

Now our icon is actually better than Android's because the latter is so easy to confuse with the align-left icon for example.


I am more than OK with the A-Z too - it's entirely symbolic, content can be sorted by, say, colour as well, and it will be OK

Uri_Herrera wrote:Although I'm not keen about using text on icons specially these since they're small, here's ascending and descending with type using the Oxygen font. And the arrows are noticeably different than the widget next to them.

Hm, I just noticed a problem which these icons have in common with the ones we proposed (but it feels more prominent in the icons above): We use the arrows in the way that they're supposed to symbolize what goes up and what goes down.
However, people who think more verbally than specially could associate an arrow pointing up with ascending and an arrow pointing down with descending. This might not be as obvious in English because ascending and descending are loan words, but e.g. in German, it's "aufsteigend" and "absteigend", which literally translates to "Climbing up" and "Climbing down". So an up arrow could easily be associated with "aufsteigend", which is exactly the opposite of what the icon symbolizes.

The icons with the bars have that problem as well, but the order of the bars helps making clearer what each one means. With the icons proposed here, the arrow is the only indicator of the direction, and with it being ambiguous, it's a potential problem.

We may of course each do a mini-usability test to see how well they work. My one test participant identified them as intended, though.

+1, Agreed

Ascending could mean either 'big value at the top' or 'the value gets bigger as you go down the list' so yes the bars may be better. My girlfriend identified the ones with the bars correctly too (the ones that jstaniek pointed out were almost the same as the BB10 ones) & she's not what you call a computer enthusiast!

It seems the initial issue was that the icons weren't recognized for the function they were used, thing is that as I pointed out the icons were for lists, while these aren't, I have no problem adding more icons specifically for use with list actions besides having these for sorting.

With 'Ascending/Descending' meaning different things to different people (it means 'the biggest on top' to me but i can see why it would mean 'Gets bigger as you go down the list' to other people), might it be an idea to go with the 'list with arrows' ones that jstaniek pointed out were almost the same as the BB10 ones, and have their text labels (or tooltips) simply as 'Sort' for both icons.

That way the icon itself makes it really obvious how the list will be reordered if you click the button and there won't be any 'Ascending/Descending' confusion.

Just missed one thing. Please look again at this:



The arrow points from top-bottom, this is how we read. The difference is in A-Z vs Z-A only.
The arrow presumable indicates the sorting activity itself only, not the order. I feel this lowers the risk of confusion.