Why would you use big toolbar icons?

Continuing the discussion from Show me your SketchUp!:

Because I am now “over the hill” and my eyesight is getting worse. My attempt to “go cheap” and get a discount pair of “working glasses” (for focusing in a monitor at about twice the distance of reading a book,) resulted in glasses that give me extreme eye strain pain. So I cannot use them.

I haven’t gone back and confronted them (I hate doing such things.) Anyway I have been using my reading glasses, and leaning in with my chin over the keyboard.


The black “VisTools” icons, I inherited from Dana’s old “FreezeTools” version. I just have never gotten around to fixing them (they are a weird size and SketchUp is resizing them and they don’t have the same margin that normal plugin icons have.) He got them from an online icon library, so they were not really meant for SketchUp plugin toolbars.

Oh ok, thanks for your answer.

There is also an argument for usability. Larger hit area == easier to click. Fitts’ Law.

I normally use small icons - but for making tutorials it’s good to have large icons (and more toolbars - as I’m more of a keyboard shortcut person)

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And easier to touch (not even to speak of higher density displays). Although compared to other software, I’d think of SketchUp’s icon sizes as medium and small :mouse:

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I strongly recommend getting a pair that is correcty defined for your eyesight. Yes, they do not come cheap. I was lucky as the custom here in Finland made my employer pay for most of them, I only paid the difference of the cheap frames offered and the ones I chose. They have multifocus lenses that are good from the reading distance up to three meters.

Anssi

I did. But somehow they messed things up. (These are not over the counter magnifiers. They are prescription.)