Writable icons not to be forced to 2D

It looks odd to me that a window may have various 3D icons, but the norm (as dictated by the Style Guide and thus dating back well over 20 years) is for writable icons to be 2D.

Can we move forward to a uniformly 3D appearance, please? Or, at least, icons that don’t force a change to 2D when their definition is 3D.

Keep 2D please. 3D writable icons are dreadful.

3D writable icons are dreadful.

What?

Why are writable icons different in that regard?

I suspect (and may be very wrong!) that one reason writable icons are 2D is the vertical size added to them by the 3D border. Non-writable fields are a certain height (52 OS units? I don’t have the Style Guide to hand), as well as standard action buttons. It does make some sense, at least to me, to have these common elements the same height as a writable field, in order to make layouts and spacing consistent. Of course, ‘default’ action buttons are bigger, as a result of their larger 3D ‘trench’, so the argument from consistency isn’t perfect.

I have to say that I quite like the simple writable fields, and feel the border would be a little too much. But these are subjective judgements, and I’m sure there are lots of different views.

Dave: Could you do a mock up, so we could visualise the suggested change?

Because you don’t press them in, you write on the surface not in a ditch, they take up too much space, clutter the dbox up distracting you from the purpose, take up too much room when you want to group several in a dbox and the ‘3d’ effect doesn’t group anything. And just look at any riscos desktop that uses 3d everything and textured backgrounds and they look so old fashioned – as incidently do the rounded buttons in RO6 but that’s another story.

Could you do a mock up, so we could visualise the suggested change

You know what he means Computer Concepts invented them in Impression and they keep popping up ever since.

Still 3D writables in the latest versions of ArtWorks, so look there for examples. They are a bit large.

but the norm (as dictated by the Style Guide and thus dating back well over 20 years) is for writable icons to be 2D

Throw out your 20 year old copy, buy an 11 month old updated style guide from rool – looked good on the stand at wakefield

…they take up too much space…

The considerations for an informational text box (text but not writable) are identical to those for a writable icon. They are normally identical in height. So I refute the notion that they take up too much space.

Could you do a mock up, so we could visualise the suggested change?

The quickest way is for you to look at NetSurf’s “NetSurf Download” dialogue box when you download a file. The “Destination” icon is initially 2S and writable; compare it with the 3D “Source” and progress information icons above and below. Note that they are all the same height. Also note that, when you have dragged the file icon to a destination, the “Destination” icon becomes 3D – at the same height – and is no longer writable.

This is better than any mock-up I can come up with.

This is also what caused me to notice the anomaly in the first place.

You think it’s NetSurf’s code that does this? It isn’t. I’ve looked. The “Destination” icon’s definition is 3D.

Throw out your 20 year old copy

What does the current one say about writable icons?

Still 3D writables in the latest versions of ArtWorks, so look there for examples.

I’d have to buy Artworks!

My mistake. Are you talking about a 3d writable icon without the black line around it? ie exactly like the display field but writable? in which case I would agree that it is the same height but not very good if you have a white background as the bottom of the 3d merges into the white text area.

Regarding writable fields in netsurf. Netsurf must set the icon to a normal 2d writable in the program because I can create a writable button with an r2 or r7 validation string in ResEd so riscos doesn’t force the 2D icons.

Note that the Netsurf download dialogue box writable field is defined as a clickable display field in the template – not a writable so netsurf must change it. It looks to me as if netsurf is just using the icon as a placeholder.