Plus and minus sign buttons?

Subject: Plus and minus sign buttons?
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 09:02:49 -0400


Andy Kubrin wondered: <<I'm documenting an application that uses buttons
labeled with plus and minus signs to step through a range of values--an
index, say, or a range of voltage settings. Is anyone aware of a convention
for referring to such buttons in text? I need an end-user term, not
developer-speak. It seems cumbersome to write "click the plus or minus
buttons ...." And I can't show a screen shot wherever I reference such a
button, either, or I'll have several screen caps per page.>>

You could certainly do a screen capture of just the buttons; where the
buttons aren't much taller than the text and aren't so small that they're
illegible, you can insert them directly in the text as inline graphics.
Where I've had problems for either reason, I've sometimes used ASCII
graphics (here, "click the [+] and [-] buttons") that look close enough to
the real thing to be easily identifiable. But that isn't a truly satisfying
solution, I confess.

I'm not enthusiastic about the notion of "define once as 'increase and
decrease buttons', then simply use increase and decrease thereafter" because
this assumes that readers will have read through enough of the manual to
encounter these definitions. As you well know, we can't count on that. An
alternative that combines both approaches might be to put the icons in the
margin with text labels explaining their names on each page where you refer
to them, then use only the words in the text. That satisfies the need to
have an accurate visual representation of the buttons plus a presentation
that doesn't disrupt line spacing etc. It also minimized the context switch
that readers make when moving from graphic to textual modes of processing.

<<As a bonus question, does anyone know if it is standard Windows UI design
practice to use these buttons?>>

I haven't seen them, though they seem reasonably intuitive. VCR-style
buttons and a small paired set of up and down arrows to the right of a field
are far more common in my experience.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can
think."--Edwin Schlossberg, designer (1945- )

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