[Sigia-l] Arrows and Sort Order

[Listera]

"Leah Buley" wrote:

> Does anyone know of a de facto standard for this? For instance, are users
> more likely to interpret the arrow as a visual echo of the direction of the
> column, or as ascending/descending indicators? And does the arrow's head
> signify the beginning or the end?  My co-worker feels that Microsoft's
> method (whatever the logic) has become the standard by virtue of ubiquity.
> I'm wondering if other research challenges this. Anyone know?

I first thought about this about 20 years ago, while designing an intranet
app, and subsequently reached the conclusion that there's no 'standard,'
period. However, unless clicking the arrows causes a trip to the database
causing network traffic and reloading, don't pay much attention. I never
know which is which and I always just click and look at the new sort,
locally cached data takes no time to sort. If there's a page reload with new
data, then I'd use Asc/Des, but even then I'm never sure how
ascending/descending specifically applies to the contents of any given list.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba