Re: Button vs. Icon

Subject: Re: Button vs. Icon
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:06:35 -0500




McKinney, Suzanne wrote:

I'm working on user documentation, and am editing something written by a
developer. I've always called GUI elements that you click to do
something "buttons" but this developer (and others) often call them
"icons". Which is it? For example, "Click the Save icon at the bottom
center of the page to save the record." To me that's a button. Is one
right or wrong, or better/worse? Please e-mail me directly as I am on
digest.


From the _developer's_ perspective, a button is a control that is generated by providing some arguments to a .dll. Most of these arguments have default values, and they speak to things like border width, shades of gray to be used, height, horizontal padding, or whatever, plus the text for the button. An icon is a graphic stored in .ico format (usually), created in an icon editor (a special-purpose graphic editor).

From the _user's_ perspective, if it looks like a button and acts like a button, call it a button.

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References:
Button vs. Icon: From: McKinney, Suzanne

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