GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 331551
List view: sorting direction communicated in an unclear way
Last modified: 2018-04-15 00:25:36 UTC
Replacing the up/down error with symbols that indicate not just a direction but rather give a hint at what is on top and bottom. Mockup will follow. Other information:
Created attachment 59579 [details] Mockup 01 For Name and Type the mockup shows 2 alternatives for indicating if sorting starts from A on top or bottom. The bars used for Size and Date could also be used, where A would be small value. A nicer icon, but more interpretation work for the user. I changed the dividers for resizing from sunken to raised, because drag-handles are usualy and should be raised. Guess that's a theming thing, though. The sorting icons are in front of the labels, to get the divider, icon, label combo for each column closer together, a visual unit. Additionaly I would like to propose enabling sorting on multiple levels. Example: Sort for Type first, sort inside each block of the same Type according to Size. I came to the conclusion the only solution to visualize that without needing much more space is the left to right sequence. Clicking in the label region of a column should make the column the first on the left. The mockup shows the mouse cursor indicating that action to happen on click.
A few things: - For me personally the symbols in the mockup don't clear things up, but I guess I am just used to the arrows. - The user will probably have to set these symbols on each column himself. If there's no icon a fallback would probably still be an arrow, which would be displayed at the right of the text, different from the icons (an arrow left of the text also looks really weird to me)... I don't think this is really feasible at the moment. As for the multiple level sorting, please see #112060.
Perhaps more elegant would be to keep the arrows where they have been, but to change their appearance to suggest aligned lesser and greater rows. _ ____ __ ___ ___ __ ____ _
On #3: The 2 bars I used for Size and Date Modified are born out that same idea. I just left out additional rows. 3 or 4 rows might look nicer, but I think this is easier to read. 2 bars or several rows - either would be an improvement over the current triangles, I think.
I don't have a strong opinion on this one, I like what mpt suggests, but I'm not sure it worth to break familiarity, Jakub what do you think? It's technically doable by the theme (theoretically, at least) using symbolics and -gtk-iconsource
*** Bug 578416 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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