Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Against ellipsis ... (dot dot dot)

<< < (3/4) > >>

Nod5:
I personally like ellipsis - if I can't have the full amount of information, I'd much rather have an indication that parts are missing. It's not like three characters carry a lot of useful entropy if there's another 100 missing. When dealing with stuff like filenames, I tend to insert the ellipsis in the middle, though.
-f0dder (April 04, 2009, 05:49 AM)
--- End quote ---
I agree about filenames for some (but not all) purposes. I like how the DC contracts long links for instance!

But for browser tabs specifically the available space is radically limited. The ellipsis can take up 50% or more of the information space if you have many tabs open. And we almost always get a sufficient indication that things are missing anyway, because (i) the tab border is reached and a new tab starts and because (ii) the text on the tab is a partial word or otherwise obviously cut off.

A drawback is some possible ambiguity: "SourceFor" COULD be both "SourceForge" with some letters missing or a site actually called "SourceFor". But I'm thinking that ellipsis doesn't help much in such cases either: "Source..." would not add more certainty. We'd still be unsure if it stands for "SourceFor" or "SourceForge" (or any other page titled "Source____" ).

Eoin: But professional how? I guess the ellipsis helps add space between information objects, just like the borders and space between tabs and the whitespace tab margins does. The compact, ellipsis-disabled alternative can look VERY compact. But at least my eyes adapted almost instantly to that. So I dare you to try FF without ellipsis for a week and then post again :D

fenixproductions/tranglos: Interesting! But Firefox seems to use three dots (see about:config part above), not a single special ellipsis-character.

edit:
BTW the thread Eoin linked ( https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=11405.0 ) describes another use of ellipsis that I'm fine with:
An ellipsis (...) at the end of a menu item indicates that an application needs additional user input to execute the item's command. An ellipsis indicates that the application will display a dialog box before executing the command. However, not all menu items that open additional windows should have an ellipsis. For example, the About item in a Help menu should not end in an ellipsis.-http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/at/book/Menus2.html
--- End quote ---

fenixproductions:
fenixproductions/tranglos: Interesting! But Firefox seems to use three dots (see about:config part above), not a single special ellipsis-character.-Nod5 (April 05, 2009, 04:19 AM)
--- End quote ---

I've took a look and ellipsis is there (no 3 separate dots).
I checked that by hitting backspace: one hit -> all gone :)

cmpm:
I like not having the dots in my tabs.
Here's two vertical tab bars if you are interested.
Wide screen monitors would be great for these.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8045

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1343

Nod5:
fenixproductions: You're right! Weird -- I was so sure that it was three separate dots when I checked.  :-[

cmpm: thanks, I'll testdrive with vertical tab for a while.

app103:
This is one of the reasons why I keep my taskbar on the side and not the top or bottom, and fully extended.

Compare:

The way I keep it:
Against ellipsis ... (dot dot dot)

Now look at the button for this page on your taskbar. (assuming you have it the standard way).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page