Bugzilla – Bug 13425
Controller: Icons + larger font = truncated menus
Last modified: 2009-10-04 18:29:32 UTC
With the new skin many controller menus are truncated too much. The icons plus the larger(?) font don't leave enough room for German chattiness: Now Playing, My Music, Internet radio, App Gallery, My Apps, Settings -> these all have to scroll when active, half of them are truncated when inactive.
this is a design issue, not for me. What I've done is to spec.
Assigning to Noah so we can discuss today. Michael, can you post a screenshot? I don't have the new firmware yet.
Created attachment 5625 [details] 4 out of 6 truncated top 3, bottom 1
Created attachment 5626 [details] 1,2,4,5 truncated "App Gallery" should read "Anwendungsgalerie" - don't know why it's not translated here...
Understood. This is a result of having to share the same design for multiple platforms (that are not the same format). The controller can withstand to have a smaller font, however, it is tied to Baby. There was a hard directive to increase the font size on Baby due to the environment and use case. Matt- do you have anything to add? Unfortunately, this might come down to a "won't fix."
(note to self: custom skin per lang.)
> (note to self: custom skin per lang.) I doubt this is a reasonable approach. Translations change. Skin should depend on string length at best. Doesn't the iPod scale down some fonts when they're growing out of the screen in some places (eg. artist list)
(In reply to comment #7) > > (note to self: custom skin per lang.) > > I doubt this is a reasonable approach. Translations change. But languages don't, in terms of their average word length etc. The idea is that for certain "verbose" languages we use a different default font size. Have discussed this with Noah and honestly this is the only solution that makes sense. If you optimize the font size for English, then in German/Russian/etc too much of the text is cut off, on average. If you optimize the font size for German/Russian/etc, then the font size will seem to small in English and other non-verbose languages. It's a Catch-22. If we react too much to any one language, we hurt the experience for everyone else. I'm only considering this for controller, FWIW. Only other solution I can really think of is to make the font-size user option more workable and easier to find. > Skin should depend on string length at best. Doesn't the iPod scale down > some fonts when they're growing out of the screen in some places (eg. > artist list) The iPod is a lot more complex than our product. They quite literally might have a full-time designer (or team!) who only deals with font issues and sizes between languages, across applications.
>Skin should depend on string length at best. Doesn't the iPod scale down >some fonts when they're growing out of the screen in some places (eg. >artist list) at a LATER date, one thing we _might_ be able to do is an on-the-fly evaluation of whether the text is going to scroll, and change font size to accomodate. a skin style could have an extra param called minimumFont and the label widget would never get scaled down below that size. visually, this would create menus with differently sized items on the same screen. don't know how the designers feel about that. this would be a non-trivial implementation though, and I'm really not sure it will ever be feasible. my gut says this bug should go to WONTFIX and we open a different one for more intelligent skinning of text to fit
(In reply to comment #9) > visually, this would create menus with differently sized items on the same > screen. don't know how the designers feel about that. > This is exactly why I would prefer NOT to take this approach. Having a consistent look is very desirable...
And here's the community's feedback on this issue: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66992
Discussed with Noah, a good short-term compromise is to reduce the font sizes (but NOT icon sizes or line heights). Assigning to Noah b/c I forget the exact font sizes involved...
Previous spec. for Controller ONLY: Text_list menus selected = FS Bold 18px un sel. = FS Med 15px FWIW the original Jive skin used 15px and this change would be device specific not effecting the landscape QVGASkin. Matt- reassigning to you to for confirmation.
Given the work load and schedule can this be moved to a P2 or even 8.0? In all fairness the skin is usable, however, not optimized. At this stage there is potential for random screens to get lost in the mix (Ben correct me if I am wrong).
I'm fine with doing a more thoughtful run-through for 8.0...
I think this is a duplicate, but can't find it yet...
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 7874 ***