How Intuitive Is My Button?

[BertMcMahan]

In context I'd guess you're picking between a full path and a relative path.

[Darren]

Yes, it looks like it's specifying whether the path in the control is absolute or relative.

But is that necessary? It seems like any path starting with a volume would be absolute, and anything else would be relative.

[TiTou]

in context it makes it much clearer.

I think the intent is good, maybe with some sort of radio-button like tweak

I think seeing both glyphs helps getting it

just my 2 cents

[altenbach]

Paths are hierarchical, so it does not make sense for the absolute path to go down, then up again. Maybe the downward branch would be sufficient.

I would leave out the bevels and make it flat. We have two equally valid choices and button in/out has no correlation to them.

I would add a good tip strip. ("fgh" is not reasonable. 😉

The black parts for the absolute path should be green

The black parts for the relative path should be grey (at least lighter than the path glyph, because it stands for something that is not there)

Personally, I would just use a text button with "abs." and "rel.", or maybe "abs.<path glyph>" and "rel.<path glyph>"

[Darren]

Or maybe a radio buttons control or an enum, since you're picking one of a finite list of options. Seems more intuitive than a button.

[paul_cardinale]

How's this?

[RTSLVU]

Better, but I know what it is supposed to mean now.

Seeing it for the first time... Root directory or other? 

I don't think I can even come up with an application where a user would have or need to select a "relative" or "absolute" path from a button.

I would really love to see where you are using this.

[paul_cardinale]

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@RTSLVU wrote:

Better, but I know what it is supposed to mean now.

Seeing it for the first time... Root directory or other? 

I don't think I can even come up with an application where a user would have or need to select a "relative" or "absolute" path from a button.

I would really love to see where you are using this.

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My original plan was to have the button as part of an XControl, whose display would always show the absolute path, but whose data value would be either the absolute path or a path relative to a base folder (and it would use text coloring to show the relative portion).  Instances of the XControl would be on a configuration VI; the paths to be stored with configuration data.  A relative path would be needed if the specified file is part of a project, that way if the files are moved, the paths aren't broken.  A path would need to be absolute if the file is outside the project.