One small immersion break for me was that the triangles next to comments are upvote buttons; I expected them to toggle the threads open and closed (even though they're pointing upwards - a toggle would point to the right in the open state). I'm not sure what an idiomatic upvote button would look like. A checkbox?
(A classic wonderful document that even us Atari ST users used to consult when developing apps!)
See page 216 (240 in the PDF), "Controls Not Supported by the Macintosh Toolbox".
"Little Arrows
The control that is two arrows pointing in opposite directions is commonly
called little arrows. It is used to increase or decrease values in a series.
Figure 7-16 shows one example of the little arrows control.'
So two small vertically stacked arrows as you'll see in their screenshot.
And you're right, those arrows to the left of the article title should be for expand/contract. (See 7-18, page 242 "Outline triangle control" in the same PDF)
Fun indeed. And you're right -- because those triangles were used to expand folder contents.
Upvoting, hmm... well together with downvoting, you could appropriate the number spinner/stepper widget [1], the tiny little up and down buttons attached to the right side of a number field? I'm not sure that was ever native to the Platinum design language [2], but IIRC Microsoft Office at least used it at the time.
EDIT: whoops, cmrdporcupine's sibling comment basically says the same thing. Leaving this comment here in case anyone's interested in the additional links.
Comments
Fun!
One small immersion break for me was that the triangles next to comments are upvote buttons; I expected them to toggle the threads open and closed (even though they're pointing upwards - a toggle would point to the right in the open state). I'm not sure what an idiomatic upvote button would look like. A checkbox?
Ok you just made me go dig into the classic official Macintosh Human Interfaces Guidelines: http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf
(A classic wonderful document that even us Atari ST users used to consult when developing apps!)
See page 216 (240 in the PDF), "Controls Not Supported by the Macintosh Toolbox".
"Little Arrows The control that is two arrows pointing in opposite directions is commonly called little arrows. It is used to increase or decrease values in a series. Figure 7-16 shows one example of the little arrows control.'
So two small vertically stacked arrows as you'll see in their screenshot.
And you're right, those arrows to the left of the article title should be for expand/contract. (See 7-18, page 242 "Outline triangle control" in the same PDF)
Fun indeed. And you're right -- because those triangles were used to expand folder contents.
Upvoting, hmm... well together with downvoting, you could appropriate the number spinner/stepper widget [1], the tiny little up and down buttons attached to the right side of a number field? I'm not sure that was ever native to the Platinum design language [2], but IIRC Microsoft Office at least used it at the time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(computing)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager
EDIT: whoops, cmrdporcupine's sibling comment basically says the same thing. Leaving this comment here in case anyone's interested in the additional links.