GNOME for the next version will be reduce icon usage for menu and button because there is a users suggestion on Bugzilla:
"I think we should consider making
/desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons default to false"
main reasons is:
- Many (if not most) of the GNOME designers agree with this
- OS X and Vista don't show them (except for special cases)
- opening menus is much faster without them
- the metaphors for the icons are often pretty useless
- it is much more elegant and less visually cluttered without them
Gimphoto already remove many icon menu for version 1.4.3, the main reason is icon was SLOWING DOWN the menu rendering, after removing it, menu rendering is faster around 25-30% and beside that icon was also taking space too much.
After i experiment with modifying menu structure for Gimphoto, i realize that users is memorize menu location and NOT menu icon or menu title, and appearently it is already known since 1990 by user interface expert, for more information about it follow this link:
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2009/06/28/old-news-about-icons/
Sources:
GNOME Dev Blog - A tale of menus
OSNews - GNOME To Drop Icons in Buttons, Menus
what yours opinion about it?
Well, it depends on your point of view. If you want to be newbie-friendly, icons are mandatory, because reading a lot of text without a single icon like photoshop's menus when you don't know what that all means will turn one mad, and because finding a specific item in a long menu is harder too without icons, though they're useless for short menus. But for a project like gimphoto that targets long time photoshop users, that's all fine.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that Gnome takes that route, because that mean that they're no more targetting new linux users and become more geek-friendly... KDE3 took that route a long time ago, and they went back.