I did post this question as part of another thread, but thought I’d create a new thread and therefore hopefully get more responses.
I’m creating the user help system. The user can toggle on/off the larger “information” icon, and the smaller icons will display around the window as shown. This has become important now because I’m taking screen shots for the entire help system, and I don’t really want to go back and replace images.
The “standard” does seem to be white text on a blue background, but I’m not sure weather it’s best in this case. My preference is the Orange, I don’t know why, but to me it just looks better. Or, do I stick with convention and go for the blue?
So which colour icons do you prefer? Blue or Orange?
Yes true Emile - blue does seem to be the standard, but I can’t help but feel it doesn’t look right. Colour preference is individual and therefore subjective, but I also don’t want to go against “the standard” if indeed that standard is important.
Originally I did have a (?) symbol but that competed with the “Help” in the main menu and looked confusing.
@Steve: sometimes I too do not like standard, but if our users are awaiting something, I think we have to provide it.
For the question mark / i: may be a question of susceptibility. Some people do not like (or cannot) ask for help. So using the Information mark is for them
At a time, Apple used a (orange) life buoy. In computer life, people that want help are not in danger: they only need some help.
There was a point that I considered a “coercive” approach to the help system, where if the user made the wrong choice they were gently reminded with an electric shock delivered via the mouse.
Then when I thought about it, the thing that really bothered me with that solution was that they could easily run the software from a laptop using the touchpad - or find some other method. Pure Anarchy!!! and complications indeed.
Users . . . God Bless Them. You have to give them points for inventiveness.
If it wasn’t for the complete disregard and complacency that Users have, then my software solution would work perfectly!! It’s almost as though they know the weak points and just tease and enjoy wrecking a perfectly good piece of working software. It’s almost as though they don’t understand that I’m just trying to help them.
Did I mention that writing this help system is driving me crazy?
I totally disagree about the orange. The blue makes for a much classier interface. IMHO I would not try to match paper, but look at the overall interface and just by looking, the orange makes it look cheap.
[quote=393133:@Louis Desjardins]My first reaction was orange. After looking for a while longer at both images, blue is less distracting. (to me of course. YMMV)
