Box Buttons drive me nuts.....

[froglips]

Don't know if anyone finds this annoying, but I do.

This button in all the vBadvanced boxes doesn't really tell me anything.

If I didn't know better, I'd probably not know that those boxes can be opened or closed.

I might be alone in this irritation.... pet peeves can be that way

If you find it "lacking", any suggestions on what kind of button might make more sense?

Jim

 

[McRabbet]

I agree that

is pretty non-descriptive, but it is univerally used for all our "boxes" to open it and

is then displayed to close it. IMHO, they each need a "fly-out" shorthand description to define what the heck they mean (you techie guys have a better term for those little info popups). The only other option might be to change the symbols to the words "Open" and "Close".

 

[Bas]

Some software uses the ">" symbol to indicate it can be expanded, when clicked it turns into a "v". It's called a twistie. Just as mysterious to the uninitiated.
Perhaps a magnifying glass would make more sense. At the very least, a tooltip when you mouseover would help (what Rob calls a fly out - which is a pretty good description . Hey Rob, your tooltip is open!).

 

[froglips]

Bas, we might need to get an innuendo moderator involved

Lately, I call that flytiptop outpop text "title" and/or "alt text". Used to be alt text till the Opera Browser folks decided to get all "letter of the lawey" about the HTML standards.

But I digress......

We could change it to text and/or different images. Luckily, its very easy to change.

I struggled with alternatives, I'm just too close to the code to think of words normal people use.

Jim

 

[froglips]

This one has promise!

View image in gallery​

Jim

 

[Bas]

It gets the message across, but animations tend to be very distracting. It would drive me nuts seeing that button on every collapsible box.

 

[froglips]

Agreed. The Click Here in a button format is what grabbed my attention.

Ok, ok, and a fascination with animated gif's, but thats a personal problem

Anyone have ideas that would be woodworking related that means "open me button"?

Jim

 

[TracyP]

Agreed. The Click Here in a button format is what grabbed my attention.

Ok, ok, and a fascination with animated gif's, but thats a personal problem

Anyone have ideas that would be woodworking related that means "open me button"?

Jim

Oh, now you got me thinking:slap::slap:

 

[McRabbet]

How about one of these: or do you like or

I just Googled treasure chest clip art... With a little work, Jim, you could animate one of these, I bet.

 

[Bas]

You know, we might be trying to solve this problem the wrong way. How about we change the setting in the admin panel to not collapse this box initially, i.e. it will be open for all to see, as in "Hey, they're having a raffle!". Of course, the image with all the prizes is waaayyyy too big, so that will have to go, but that's OK - we can link to the forum post that has the prize info.

If people think the box is too large and takes away from the post listing...no problemo, they can just click the icon to collapse it.

 

[Travis Porter]

You know, we might be trying to solve this problem the wrong way. How about we change the setting in the admin panel to not collapse this box initially, i.e. it will be open for all to see, as in "Hey, they're having a raffle!". Of course, the image with all the prizes is waaayyyy too big, so that will have to go, but that's OK - we can link to the forum post that has the prize info.

If people think the box is too large and takes away from the post listing...no problemo, they can just click the icon to collapse it.

Those were my thoughts exactly. Can the box be configured to be "maximized" or whatever it is called?

 

[Bas]

Those were my thoughts exactly. Can the box be configured to be "maximized" or whatever it is called?

Yes - the term is collapse/ expand.

 

[froglips]

While I appreciate the specific box in question, I'd like to steer this thread back to the expand/collapse button graphic specifically across all boxes.

As some may have read today, a few members were unaware that these boxes had buttons at all. Which I attribute to the poor default button graphic used. I'd used this site for a few years before realizing they were buttons.

I hunted for options and its not as easy as I thought.

I'm leaning towards suggesting a button with words in it. Maybe "More" or "Click for More"?

Found some really neat things, like a hand wheel like on a table saw, but by the time you shrink it to fit, its really too small to see. Same issue with a nifty plan to use a tablesaw blade. Ran into the same issue with the Treasure Chests :-(

Jim