Ionrock Dot Org

So, yesterday I realize that evolution has really large icons that have no hope of ever seeing the light of day because they are just too big. After a conversation on IRC I found that it was not the icons, but the text below them that made them span across my desktop. Before I go on, just to give you an idea of how wide I needed my window to be in order for all the icons to be seen, consider my monitor. It is 1600x1200 which I have always thought to be pretty big. In order for me to show all the icons on evolutions top toolbar, I have to keep the window around 85% of my desktop width. This may seem pretty trivial but I can't even imagine using evolution on a 1024x768 resolution! So, in order to actually use all my icons (they are there to be used you know), I had to find a way to make things smaller.

My search started with a right click on the toolbar which used to provide options to change things like whether or not the icons were large or small. I then checked the preferences, searching for some way to get reasonable sized icons, but again, I found nothing. At this point I am very confused because I distinctly remember doing this in earlier versions. In addition, I am switching from Thunderbird, which has always made editing toolbars very simple (IMO). I am getting a bit frustrated at this point and go back to IRC to see what someone else might know about it. A comment regarding a gnome-ui-system-tool-thing was pointed out to me. I had remembered seeing this before so with a few clicks I had no more text and reasonable looking icons.

I wondered why I had a gnome setting dialog that would change my evolution icons. It didn't make sense to me why I had to do things this way. I asked on IRC (#evolution) about this and the answer was essentially that no one wants to change all their icons on a per application basis because it would be a pain. I agree if I had thirty applications that I needed to do this on, it would be a problem the one instance I had to do it. On the other hand, if I install a new application with an icon bar that makes no sense to me, how do I know what these new icons do? The answer I got was to view the tooltip. Now, I don't know if this seems nuts to anyone else but it does to me. Think about it for just a minute. If I can customize my most used applications to help increase efficiency, then this is helpful. Smaller icons are arguably less usable but in some circumstances it makes more sense, such as saving screen real estate because you exactly where the icons are in the toolbar. When I install a new application though, I would like to know what the icons do. A good example would be a photo album program such as f-spot. There is not a international sign for resize image or add a comment. A text label then becomes a huge help in learning the interface quickly. If I have to wait a second or two for each icon in order to learn what it does, I am wasting time. If I install 2 or 3 new applications, there is a good chance I have already lost the time saving I got from using the gnome preferences. I realize the convenience and appreciate the opportunity for a default setting that covers the entire desktop. My problem is that for occasionally used programs the text is helpful. I am only likely to customize a few programs and not every application I have.

With this in mind I turned to the HIG to see what it said. It was pretty clear saying that an application should provide the option to turn text on or off as well as have large or small icons. At this point I was livid! It seemed that a gnome preference dialog had completely broken the HIG in very serious way. Linux is hard enough to learn to use without having to spend all day waiting for tooltips! Anyway, to make a long story short, I talked to a friend of mine about it and he said that evolution was not 100% HIG compliant. I tried Gedit out and it had the same flaw. I am not saying either of these programs are bad of course. My main concern was that the HIG specified a really stupid setting. This not being the case, I can let it go that two of the more important gnome apps don't follow the HIG to perfection. So, was all this very important? Not really. It was interesting though and I think I did learn a little something.

At this point I am very very tired. If you haven't noticed, it is very obvious that I am tired of writing for the night. I will now brush my choppers and head to bed. Tomorrow I have class until 7:30 pm so I need to get some sleep. Nite.