[OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons

[Jani Patokallio]

Greetings,

> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:24:54 -0500
> From: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at metacarta.com>
> Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Users] Intuitive and good looking icons
>
> I disagree. I like the default OpenLayers icons, and always have. (And
> am kind of tired of people acting as if any kind of visual design
> decision is 'obviously wrong', as people seem to do with the OpenLayers
> controls all the time.)

That's a silly attitude.  If people complain about the OpenLayers
controls all the time,
then the problem is in the controls, not the people, and I fully agree
with Zer that the
some parts of current set are not intuitive and look amateurish. 
Compare with the
icons over at our friends on Google: theirs are anti-aliased (ours
aren't) and tastefully
done in shades of white and gray (ours aren't).

Specific usability points:
* Still no tooltips for any of the controls!
* We use the same [+] icon to mean three completely separate things:
"zoom in", "switch map",
"open minimap".  The minimap should be changed to an diagonal arrow
opening out
(like Google), and the switch map control to a localized "Map" text button.
* The mode-switching between "drag" and "select" tends to confuse the
hell out of
people using an OpenLayers map for the first time, especially since the
mode is indicated
only by changing the background color of the icon to a bizarre shade of
light blue used
nowhere else in the interface.  Dragging a mouse with the button held
down is not only
unintuitive, but physically difficult for many people, especially the
elderly.  I would
suggest doing away with it entirely as follows:
- Default to drag mode.
- Start selecting if the user single-clicks anywhere that's not a marker.
- Clear selection and return to drag mode if user moves outside map area.
- End selection and zoom if the user clicks again.  Return to drag mode.
This accomplishes the same, but is more obvious in function (the select
box appears
after an easy and common action), is much faster and easier for users
(no need to
manually toggle) and frees up screen space (no need for extra icons).

And oh, if you think these are trivial and that our users are smarter
than that, then
go ahead, find your father/child/techno-illiterate significant other and
ask them what
each button in an OpenLayers map does.  I'd add these to Trac, but due
to some
proxy weirdness I can't stay logged in at all...

Cheers,
-jani