GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 659388
21 years of the spin button
Last modified: 2011-11-28 14:59:36 UTC
Created attachment 196876 [details] Spin buttons from the last 21 years + proposed fixed version Have you noticed that the spin button haven't changed since Windows 3.11? It is still those 10 pesky pixels per button which are just a hard to hit as they were 21 years ago. As shown on the mock up, I am proposing a more desktop and tablet friendly version as drawn at the bottom with +/- signs to denote addition and subtraction to the counter.
Created attachment 196888 [details] Spin buttons from the last 21 years + Google Chrome spin button
I just learned that Google had addressed the exact problem I described in their Google Chrome Wrench menu. Please see updated mock up.
adding ui-review keyword to get the design team in the loop
interesting idea
Having the controls on the right works well with labels... do you have any examples of the chrome-style spin buttons with those? You could have the larger plus and minus buttons to the right, of course: +-----+---+---+ Pints of beer: | 4 | + | - | +-----+---+---+
right, there's some alignment concerns with putting the plus on the left
An alternative approach is to make the buttons a pair of right-angled triangles. http://www.avdf.com/multimedia/art_spin.html (Those ones are back-to-front, but you get the idea.) The advantage is that it increases the *effective* target area (the size of the roughly-circular area in which you're aiming), without actually using any more space. The disadvantage is that it looks less attractive in itself, and inconsistent with the arrows in scrollbars and radio menus. (Incidentally, I think being "tablet-friendly" is a non-goal. Tablet widgets should be different from pointing-device widgets in many ways, and trying to split the difference will please no-one.)
Comment #5 There isn't any other spin button in Chrome AFAIK. Attached a screenshot of the menu, where the label text is to the left. With a lot of distance.
Created attachment 197014 [details] Chrome menu
(In reply to comment #9) > Created an attachment (id=197014) [details] > Chrome menu I might be wrong here, but this looks like it's designed specifically for the zoom case rather than being a generic spin button. Doesn't mean it isn't relevant, of course...
Created attachment 200068 [details] Google's redesigned spin button This spin button is who it looks in Google Chrome 15 in the Preferences menu.
I think the Google design is much better than the other design. It's more natural for the plus to the to the right of the minus (at least for left-to-right text direction; we should ask what would be natural for the Semitic languages). Keeping plus and minus apart makes it less likely that the wrong button would be pressed, which is especially valuable for touchscreen interfaces.
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but we are happy to tell you that the problem has already been fixed. It should be solved in the next software version. You may want to check for a software upgrade. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 663359 ***