Feedback:Visual Feedback
From KDE-HIG_Wiki
Our current computer systems may provide three types of feedback: Visual, auditive, and tactile feedback.
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Visual Feedback
Visual feedback is the most widely used type of feedback in current computer systems. There are various ways to provide visual feedback.
Spatial feedback
- current element is in front (e.g. tab, window)
- visual-tactile feedback (e.g. button pressed, button mouse-over)
- drawers (kde4?)
- desktop layers/levels/dashboards (plasma)
- transparency (plasma)
<todo>
Activity feedback and notifications
- OSD, e.g. in amaroK
- Systray
- Task Bar
- Message box
<todo>
Progress feedback
- mouse pointer
- progress bars
- progress icon, e.g. in Konqueror,
<todo>
Highlighting
- current window
- current frame/panel in the window
- selected item
- mouse-over item
<todo>
Light Traces
Show where a UI element comes from and where it goes to
- an application files itself in the systray
- minimizing a window
- opening/closing a toolbox/dialog/whatever (light trace from toolbar to window, vv.)
- new element created, e.g. folder in konqui or contact added in kopete
<todo>
Pointer Feedback
see section Pointer Feedback <todo>
Drag and Drop Feedback
see section DnD <todo>
Auditory Feedback
For most users, auditive feedback is an additive feedback mechanism. In contrast, for visually handicapped users, audio feedback is a basic means to use a computer.
<todo>
Tactile Feedback
Tactile feedback is hardly used in current PC systems. Most tactile feedback is not influenced by the software, but by the hardware (e.g. characteristics of a keyboard).
Instead, the visual-tactile coordination, e.g. pointer acceleration or threshold, is determined by software. It is important to provide feasible defaults here (e.g. slow, medium, fast) which consider the hardware characteristics.
A purely tactile feedback which is generated by software is rather seldom. An example is a mouse that vibrates over links, buttons and other clickable elements.
