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On/Off Switches in User Interfaces
- markbernard 15y agoSince he doesn't allow comments, I will comment here. While I agree with the author's comment that the switch is ambiguous, I disagree with his perception of the current state. To my mind the switch shown is a rocker switch that has the off side currently pressed. But that just shows how bad it is since different people see different things.
- edoloughlin 15y agotl;dr: The author critiques a poor imitation of the iOS on/off toggle.
- kamkha 15y agoPersonally, I can't think of a situation which calls for one of these potentially ambiguous sliders over, say, a checkbox. The imitation that the author is critiquing is poorly designed in my eyes, but even the iOS original is a bit ambiguous to me. Is the label on the button that of the current state, or of the state that the switch would attain if pressed? It's the former in the iOS control, but I could definitely see people getting confused over that. On a different note, here's a screenshot of the same iOS slider in a different locale (posted in the comments on the article): http://d.pr/VHZF http://d.pr/VHZF. Maybe it's the fact that "|" and "O" aren't often used to mean "on" and "off" in my English locale, but that just looks unpleasing to me.