Group Settings

Group Settings

Summary

Group Settings that belong together and give that group a short and descriptive label. Try to omit orphaned settings. Find group descriptions also for single settings that don't find into other groups.

Unless the HIG for your platform tells you otherwise use bold for the group headings, omit frames and indent the group content.

Illustration

Grouping Illustrated

Context

You have decided which settings to place in which pages. To further simplify finding settings you plan to group them within the pages.

Problems

For users a big problem when using a settings dialog is to find the right setting. That's why a good information architecture is important to make browsing settings easy.

Browsing settings doesn't stop at the level of pages though. The single settings on the pages need to be grouped as well.

Some toolkits use boxes to group settings and surround them with a thin border. While this makes grouping unambiguous this leads to an unnecessary heavy appearance. Also when scanned vertically the group labels are competing with the single settings since they usually are on the same indendation level.

An alternative way to display grouping is by means of proper indendation and a bold font face for the group headings.

Examples

GTK Groups

XUL Group Boxes

KDE Group Boxes

Solution

• Group settings that semantically can be covered by the same topic.
• Give the group a short label summarizing what the grouped settings have in common.
• Omit orphaned settings. Instead give settings that don't fit into any other group a group heading of its own.
• Indent the group content and
• use a bold font face for the group headings. This will make scanning the group headings easier.

Rationale

Code Snippets

Show Code Example

Related Patterns

Browse Settings

Literature

Categories: Settings