On 7/3/07, Mark Clements <gmane(a)kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
Icons are necessarily at least _slightly_ less clear
than text. It is not
particularly intuitive that a picture of a house means go back to the
starting page, but it has become recognised as such through consistent use
between many browsers and websites. A standardised 'edit' button would do
the same.
Sure, if you expect everyone to start editing wikis. People recognize
the house icon because 1) that's the standard icon *and* 2) everyone
uses browsers, which use the standard icon. People wouldn't be
familiar with the home icon if they didn't use browsers all the time,
and likewise people wouldn't be familiar with a wiki edit button
unless they edited wikis all the time. Which I don't think is the
kind of people we should be predominantly catering to primarily just
yet.
I'm viewing the ideal edit link, at present, as one that entices as
many new users as possible to use it, and despite your reference to
"pretty much every UI study ever", I don't see how that goal is
achieved by replacing text with icons that no one will recognize
(yet). An *accompanying* icon is a different question, that I don't
see anything wrong with, but I'm sure not going to be the one enduring
a firestorm by modifying Monobook's entrenched aesthetics.
This is all rather off the topic, anyway. I'll wait a little longer,
but I do plan to do what I said, really. Not like the time I
announced on this list that I would change over all the id's and
classes in the software to be consistent (which would probably have
been a bad idea anyway).