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Bug 659388 - 21 years of the spin button
21 years of the spin button
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 663359
Product: gtk+
Classification: Platform
Component: Widget: GtkSpinButton
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: gtk-bugs
gtk-bugs
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-09-18 12:22 UTC by Amadeus
Modified: 2011-11-28 14:59 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Spin buttons from the last 21 years + proposed fixed version (13.29 KB, image/png)
2011-09-18 12:22 UTC, Amadeus
Details
Spin buttons from the last 21 years + Google Chrome spin button (15.10 KB, image/png)
2011-09-18 18:06 UTC, Amadeus
Details
Chrome menu (24.22 KB, image/png)
2011-09-20 02:14 UTC, Amadeus
Details
Google's redesigned spin button (14.53 KB, image/png)
2011-10-26 22:23 UTC, Amadeus
Details

Description Amadeus 2011-09-18 12:22:46 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.
Comment 1 Amadeus 2011-09-18 18:06:28 UTC
Created attachment 196888 [details]
Spin buttons from the last 21 years + Google Chrome spin button
Comment 2 Amadeus 2011-09-18 18:07:45 UTC
I just learned that Google had addressed the exact problem I described in their Google Chrome Wrench menu.

Please see updated mock up.
Comment 3 Emmanuele Bassi (:ebassi) 2011-09-18 20:37:44 UTC
adding ui-review keyword to get the design team in the loop
Comment 4 Matthias Clasen 2011-09-18 21:55:37 UTC
interesting idea
Comment 5 Allan Day 2011-09-19 09:27:41 UTC
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 | + | - |
               +-----+---+---+
Comment 6 Matthias Clasen 2011-09-19 12:04:42 UTC
right, there's some alignment concerns with putting the plus on the left
Comment 7 Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) 2011-09-19 13:52:27 UTC
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 8 Amadeus 2011-09-20 02:13:38 UTC
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.
Comment 9 Amadeus 2011-09-20 02:14:01 UTC
Created attachment 197014 [details]
Chrome menu
Comment 10 Allan Day 2011-09-20 12:12:50 UTC
(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...
Comment 11 Amadeus 2011-10-26 22:23:40 UTC
Created attachment 200068 [details]
Google's redesigned spin button

This spin button is who it looks in Google Chrome 15 in the Preferences menu.
Comment 12 Pavel Roskin 2011-10-29 23:45:40 UTC
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.
Comment 13 Javier Jardón (IRC: jjardon) 2011-11-28 14:59:36 UTC
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 ***