what to call a button

Subject: what to call a button
From: Sharon Burton <sharonburton -at- EMAIL -dot- MSN -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 14:32:20 -0700

I am documenting a product that the client bought from another company with
the limitation that they can only extend the product. They cannot change
what exists.

One of the things that exists is a button that is a picture of a stop sign
or a green light, depending on the state of other things. The tiny little
text (really tiny) on the buttons say Stop for the stop sign and Go for the
green light. The problem is that the tooltip says Run for the green light,
as does the text in the status bar. When the button is mentioned in the
text, it always has a picture of the actual button next to it.

What to do? Is it the Run/Stop button or is it the Go/Stop button? Do we go
with the tiny text or the tooltip? I prefer the tooltip and status bar
because all the other (and there are a lot) buttons are identified this way.
The programmers want Go/Stop since that is what the buttons say.

Changing the interface is not an option.

Opinions?

sharon

Sharon Burton
Anthrobytes Consulting
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www.anthrobytes.com
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