[linux-audio-dev] mouse wheel behavior and RFC: human interface guidelines

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 06:35:44PM +0200, Melanie wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> it's backwards in a "numerical" sense, in that the numbers increase with 
> one slider type, but decrease with another, using the same command.
> 
> However, UI designers don't think in numbers, but associations.
> 
> Left is generally associated with up, right with down, as we read left to 
> right, top to bottom. Therefore, up MUST map to left, down MUST map to 
> right, otherwise, non-mathematically minded people get uttely confused.

I couldn't find anything on the web abou this.
But I asume the behaviour was thought out for 
scrollbars and transfered to sliders.

With scrollbars scrolling lets say a table, the vertical scrollbar 
has top = start, bottom = end. Horizontal scrollbar left = start, 
right = end. Wheeling up on vertical sliders means scrolling 
toward the vertical start. Wheeling up on the horizontal slider 
should therefor mean scrolling to the horizontal start -> scrolling 
left.

But there's nothing to scroll with sliders. They're not about 
a position in space.

Today might well have been the first time I used the wheel 
on common sliders, and it felt backwards!

Fan-slider wheeling will stay as is, differing from QT and 
GTK sliders. But I doubt the folks behind the toolkits would 
listen and change wheeling direction.


---
Thorsten Wilms