red/yellow/blue buttons an anachronism?

Peter Crowther Peter.Crowther at IT-IQ.com
Fri Oct 1 07:28:05 UTC 1999


> The names of the buttons should be semantic, not color or positional.

.... unless the semantics vary between different parts of the same system, in
which case no single semantic naming convention can suffice.  For example:

> In MVC, <select> <operate> and <window> are the names I think of for the
> mouse.  In Morphic, <select> <operate> and <halo> .

Case closed, to me at least.

As we're in a situation where a button does not necessarily have a single
physical realisation (for example, option keys to distinguish multiple
virtual buttons on the click of one physical button), let alone the same
physical realisation for all users on all platforms, a positional notation
is also inappropriate.

Given the above, it seems natural to invent an arbitrary set of names for an
arbitrary set of virtual buttons.  I'd quite happily go with Charles,
Renaldo and Kung-Kiu as the names of the buttons provided the names were
used consistently; what is then important is a consistent mapping of these
virtual buttons to operations within any particular interface style, such as
MVC, Morphic, the GIMP, the Windows Style Guide, Paint Shop Pro.

		- Peter





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