- entry
Clam's entry features a solid, slightly rounded borders.
Highlighting is in a different colour and inside the
control.
The typical entry design can now being
described as universally adhering to pseudo-3d.
Highlighting is better than in other clam
controls; but to small (1 pixel) and inside the
control, making it difficult to see it on high
resolution displays such as in laptops.
Using highlighting inside the control tends to
increase the control's size –fortunately not so
in this case.
- scale
Uses a flat outline with a solid border, square
edges and a raised (pseudo-3d) slider. There is
no highlighting.
This design is similar to Tk's scale.
The control has a flat appearance.
- button
The button has a small raised (pseudo-3d)
border. Highlighting is done using a stippled
line inside the control. The edges are slightly
rounded – same as with the entry control.
The stippled line, indicating keyboard focus,
will be completely unseeable on high resolution
and / or high contrast displays. These
technique is justly abandoned virtually
everywhere else, now.
There is to much white space inside the button.
I did reduce the internal white space to
'-padding 2', which is OK.
To increase the font size and thus the control
is a better approach to enlarge them. An overuse
of white space inside active controls disrupts
the visual cues of a control.
Using internal focus highlighting yields the
same negative effect.
- checkbutton
Focus highlighting is the same as with buttons.
The check-indicator uses a sunken (pseudo-3d)
border with white background. The check mark
'x' is used to depict its active state.
Depicting checkbuttons via a sunken indicator is
a curiosity. A button (and a checkbutton is a
button) is usually raised. Using a pseudo-3d
sunken border is inconsistent with clam's
general design –not even the entry uses a sunken
border.
The 'x'-symbol, marking the active state, is an
unfortunate choice. The 'x'-symbol has been
frequently abused to signify terms such as
'cancel' or 'delete'.
On paper, I use a 'check mark' (look into a
dictionary) to indicate that the statement is
correct etc.; whereas the 'x'-mark usually
indicates something important is still pending.
- radiobutton
Focus highlighting is the same as with buttons.
The check-indicator uses a sunken (pseudo-3d) border with a
white background. A dot is used to indicate the active state.
The dot as an indicator is ok,
otherwise the critique is the same as for the checkbutton.
- menubutton
The menubutton is a button with an additional menu-indicator.
What was written about button does apply to the menubutton, too.
The menubutton indicator is a filled, down pointing
angle –as it is frequently seen for comboboxes. The
indicator is out of alignment with the text on the
menubutton. The indicator does visually dominate the
whole control –by being filled.
The control could be improved by using two smaller
filled angles pointing in opposite directions (see
AQUA® for example).
To leave the single angle unfilled would be an option,
too; in this case text and angle have to be aligned.