Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Please review: two new help pages

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From: Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 20:44:00 +0100
Guy Harris wrote:


On Feb 9, 2004, at 10:06 AM, Ulf Lamping wrote:

Well, that's odd! Why using "status bar" but "toolbar"? Is there any reason behind this?
I had a short look at the GNOME HIG, and they name it exactly that way.


I guess it depends on whose HIG (and software) are being used.

The Apple HIG for Mac OS X refers to "toolbar(s)"; it didn't refer to a "status bar" in any obvious place, but the Cocoa documentation appears to refer to "status bar(s)" (and that's what Safari calls it in the View menu).

The KDE User Interface Guidelines can't seem to make up its mind:

http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/toolbar/ index.html

"The classic toolbar is a buttonbar. KDE toolbars can also contain other widgets, e. g., labels, line edits, combo boxes, and frames (which can contain everything else!).

The tool bar offers a quick way to invoke actions that are used frequently. Remember: all actions should be accessible through the menu bar - don't have an action in the toolbar that isn't also in the menubar!"

http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/statusbar/ index.html

"Statusbar

The status bar is for displaying information on the state of the document you are working on. Typically you will have more than one field for information in the bar. The first of these inserted will have their size fixed and the last will span the remaining width of the window."

whereas Microsquish appears to use "toolbar" and "status bar":

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ dnwue/html/ch08d.asp

Hmmmm, but does it make *any* sense to use it seperated for one term and together for some other (but very similar one)?

Regardless of that, it sounds to me, that we should name it, as you suggested earlier: "toolbar" and "status bar"

Regards, ULFL