Hi, I just realized that the button to set the default view of flow threads – full, topics only or compact (titles only) – was refactored into a single button.
While I appreciate the fact that this is worked on, I'm afraid having three states "hidden" behind a single button is a discoverability issue:
- The three icons are too similar to be able to clearly distinguish between them
- A new user wouldn't know there are three states and has to "click through" at least once to understand
- The tool-tip texts (that are probably meant to explain the states and alleviate the issues I'm describing) are not clear enough to explain what one will actually get.
Even I (whom I already knew the three states) found myself "clicking through" (two times!) until I finally had what I wanted because neither the icons nor the tool-tips were descriptive enough to accurately hit the wanted setting on first try.
Although this adds a little bit more UI clutter I'd suggest to add all three buttons to the top at all times and highlight the currently active mode. This has multiple advantages:
- First of all users get to know there are three states in total
- A user directly sees which state is active
- The three icons besides each other might show the iconic differences better (therefore making it easier to recognize and choose the correct one)
- The position of the icons adds an additional layer of recognizability: For one thing the logical ordering can be remembered (e.g. most compact view to most verbose view or the other way round, whatever designers chose), for another thing users can remember the position itself (e.g. "I want the icon in the middle for topic view").