Comparison of Go buttons

Ok, the next button I want to look at is the Go button. First of all, in my opinion, every interface should have a Go button. I wish my microwave had one-just put my food in and press Go.

As with the Refresh/Reload buttons, I will be considering three attributes of the button’s glyphs to determine usability.

• Appropriate size
• Intuitive glyph
• Intuitive color

Size

The sizes of all of the buttons are too small in my opinion. IE and FireFox have made their buttons small enough to be inline with the URL bar. I don’t think that’s necessary or a good idea.

Both FireFox and IE hide the button completely until a change has been made to the URL. I’m not a fan of this functionality. When it comes to navigation, I think you always want to show the user possible options. They may have been better off just disabling the button until a change instead of hiding it (or just leave it enabled and visible). Why cant I click go again?

I also don’t like that FireFox’s button isn’t a button so much as it is a glyph embedded in the URL bar. This is just plain dumb in my opinion. A button should look like a button.

Safari…well it doesn’t even have a go button. Lame.

No winners here.

Glyphs

The glyphs for IE and FireFox both have the right idea (no pun intended). Both are eastward facing arrows. This is definitely the standard for go buttons. I prefer IE’s glyph though. The FireFox glyph is too geometric and abstract. It looks more like a tilted triangle than an arrow. I give this one to IE.

Color

Color!!! Well, I don’t like Safari’s completely transparent color. Other than that, both FireFox and IE use green, which I believe is the accepted standard, so they each earn a point.

Winner: Internet Explorer

So, the overall winner for Go button usability is…Internet Explorer, but only because it is the lesser of two evils.