I have a winforms application that doesn't have a shared set of tools that I can provide on a toolbar. But I want to have a toolbar, so I was planning on using that space to provide quick links to the most popular portions of the product. I will eventually add knowledge to the product to know which screens the current user favors and provide those as quick links on the toolbar. But is this a reasonable use of a toolbar for a desktop product, from a design and usability point of view?
A:
I think a toolbar makes a good aesthetic, but if you merely want to seperate parts of the app then a Tab bar makes more sense for usability.
With the advent of tabbed browsing, every user understands the tab concept.
TravisO
2008-12-01 20:22:11
you'd be surprised how many people don't understand, and have never heard of, tabbed browsing. There are still people using IE5. Until last week, my sister was using IE6 (at which time she got yelled at and I installed FF)
rmeador
2008-12-01 20:24:33
If she's still using IE7, I sure hope you turn on her Automatic Updates too, that's even more important, security wise, then pushing FF on her.
TravisO
2008-12-01 20:32:00
A:
Sure. Firefox has something similar in their 'Bookmarks Toolbar'.
Peachtree Accounting also has a toolbar like this, as do many others.
Tabbing is OK as long as there aren't too many.
Would be real good if the user could personalize the toolbar themselves. Sometimes I don't only want places I frequent, but screens that I use occasionally that are hard to find through menus or whatnot.
dna123
2008-12-01 20:26:27
+1
A:
Do not automatically add knowledge about what a user prefers to generate a toolbar. Having a dynamically generated toolbar is confusing for users. It's fine if your configuration bar makes suggestions dynamically (i.e. suggesting buttons), but changing the layout itself is evil.
Brian
2008-12-01 20:29:11
I was planning on adding a dynamic section that will be editable by the user, but not changing the whole structure of the toolbar. There's nothing more frustrating than having buttons moved around on users.
ericmck
2008-12-02 17:21:00
A:
To me, this looks like a job for a menu with a MRU list, or support 'Add to Favorites'.
Beth
2009-07-14 16:25:50