Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arrows

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Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arrows
by AC on Wednesday 21/Mar/2007, @18:51

Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and GNOME have stopped using + and - for expanding and contracting folders in the TreeView, and are now using triangle arrows pointing either sideways or down. I think triangle arrows are more intuitive because they actually point in the direction of the folder contents. The + and - are just too cryptic and geekish.

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arrows
by Troy Unrau on Wednesday 21/Mar/2007, @19:00

This appearance is a function of the widget style.

I took my screenshots with what are currently the KDE 4 default widget style, but it will not be the final KDE 4 widget style. The final style for KDE 4 is still a work in progress (hence why it hasn't been made the default yet) but this is definitely the sort of change that can happen there.

That said, I don't see anything particularly wrong with the current form, as + and - intuitively mean 'expand' and 'collapse' to me. And changing it just because OS X and/or Gnome have changed it is not a great argument. That same argument would suggest that we change our button orders, and various other things as well, which is not going to happen.

That said, I am under the impression that this is not really a ease-of-use issue, and if it does get changed in a given style, it'll be because the artists who are writing the style think that it looks better :) Which is more valid (in my opinion) than the other arguments :)

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by reihal on Wednesday 21/Mar/2007, @23:05

"And changing it just because OS X and/or Gnome have changed it is not a great argument."

It have already been changed once, so why not twice?
KDE 1 rules. Nice clear small icons, too!

kfm.png
70KB (72472 bytes)

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by Debian User on Thursday 22/Mar/2007, @16:17

Yesh, KDE was only good until KDE2 ;-)

That said, the minimalistic style of the days had its appeal.

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by Erik on Friday 23/Mar/2007, @07:28

I notice KDE used to have nice fonts :-)

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by Troy Unrau on Friday 23/Mar/2007, @08:26

Well, the fonts depend on the distro... but nonetheless, those fonts are not using anti-aliasing. You can turn anti-aliasing off and have the fonts look somewhat like that still -- they are much more readable in lower font sizes that way, as well as quicker.

X and fonts is still a big problem, after years of work...

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by Ben on Thursday 22/Mar/2007, @01:43

Speak for you're self, I like + & -

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by Carlo on Thursday 22/Mar/2007, @18:48

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Re: Drop the + and - in TreeView, use triangle arr
by zonk on Thursday 22/Mar/2007, @05:47

The TreeView widgets are not drawn by KDE apps directly, but by QT (more specifically, by the QT style plugin you use). Thus, some widget styles will have +/- icons in TreeViews, some will have triangle arrows, some will have something totally else :). It's your choice which widget style you use. And some, like the default KDE3 Plastik style, have this configurable. Just run Control Center (why isn't it named "Kontrol Center"?), go to the (Appearance&Themes | Style) applet, and click on the "Configure" button beside the style selector combobox. In the Plastik style the option is named "Triangular tree expander". Enjoy :).

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