GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 732222
Add save to the gear menu
Last modified: 2015-04-17 18:25:08 UTC
Recent user testing on gedit 3.12 revealed an issue with the save options in the gear menu. When the user was asked to save a document, they would often go to the gear menu and see the Save As and Save All items. This was confusing - "why are there all these other options and not regular Save?" If we're going to provide save options, we should probably include the standard save action along with them.
There's a "Save" button right next to the gear menu. Could this issue be related to the unfamiliar icon it uses? I had to hover my mouse over the save button and read the tooltip to figure out what it did.
Hi. I'm the person who facilitated the usability tests. I think the "Save" icon is unfamiliar. While I don't recall hearing comments about that icon itself, I did discuss this with others outside the usability test. The "down arrow pointing into a box" icon reminded several folks of a "Download" icon. They didn't think of this as "Save." Having "Save As" in the gear menu was confusing, as testers eventually clicked on the gear menu in search of a way to save the file. They found "Save As" and assumed that was the only way to save the fie. Having a "Save" action in the gear menu would help this. Perhaps the "Save" button can use a text label instead of an icon?
(In reply to comment #2) > Perhaps the "Save" button can use a text label instead of an icon? For gedit that might work fine, but I think in general it would be difficult to avoid the use of image buttons in header bars: text buttons take up more space and don't look as good grouped together. I think it might be better to instead duplicate the actions in gear menu, so that the gear menu has everything and the buttons in the header bars are redundant (like shortcuts). This is a pattern that could be used throughout GNOME. (The disadvantage is that makes the menu larger.)
The Save button has been changed to text-only for 3.14. @Allan Day: what do you think of Michael's solution from comment #3 to add the Save action to the gear menu?
Well gedit seems to have managed fine without duplicating any actions in its window menu. Since we're moving towards popover menus, I wonder if it's more important to favor smaller menus than to have comprehensive menus.
(In reply to Jim Hall from comment #2) > Perhaps the "Save" button can use a text label instead of an icon? That's what is now done, so this bug can be closed.