139
Screen digits are right aligned to maintain positional consistency between what a number represents (in base 10 that would be units, tens, hundreds, etc.).
E.g. If I were to have 764 and then multiply it by 24, the answer would be 18336. By aligning to the right I've consistently seen the same unit representation in the same position, and when I've had new ...
129
Number fields should not always be right-aligned
It often makes sense to right-align numbers when they are being compared to other number fields (e.g. in financial statements). This can help comparability and scannability.
However, sometimes number fields are unrelated or are mixed with text fields in a form, so left-alignment may promote better visual ...
83
There is no universally good answer to this question, but there are definitely two pros of YYYY:
by showing the two leading numbers you can easily tell e.g. 1911 from 2011,
you know exactly where the year is in cases when the year is from the range XX01-XX12.
In other words:
Notation Possible interpretations:
----------- -------------------------
09/...
64
As a rule, it's never OK to use a 2-digit year. If you can prove that using a 4-digit year will cause thousands of babies and cute fluffy bunnies to die horribly, that could be an exception to the rule, but probably not.
I have seen hundreds of costly process failures simply because a programmer thought it was perfectly OK to use a 2-digit year or a local ...
48
I came up with another way to handle this scenario which is more clear in cases with arbitrary jumps.
1. Show links below the text input to quickly convey how the bidding system works by listing valid choices which can be chosen with a single click right from the start.
2. Update valid choices as the user types or clicks The user can either type 68 or ...
48
AP style says "spell out whole numbers below 10, and use figures for 10 and above".
Chicago Manual style says spells out numbers below 100, or as an alternative rule to use AP style instead.
Nielsen Norman Group says, basically, to heck with the old rules; everybody just skims online anyway so use figures for all specific numbers, because people notice ...
40
Digits are right aligned for similar reasons as you would right align them in a spreadsheet or a table.
i.e. when you see multiple numbers (and they all have a fixed set of decimal places), then it's easier to compare the numbers with each other because the digits corresponding to each place value are in the same physical position, thus making it easier to ...
38
TL;DR; Use one, or the other, but not both.
Consider how you would read this out loud, noting OP has already indicated this is a relative measure:
In the positive case, this is "plus 13" or "an increase of 13" or "up by 13" or even, with context, "13 more than last time I was here".
In the negative, you'd have "minus 13", "a decrease of 13", "down by 13" ...
32
Well, I guess there is a maximum number of miles someone can travel in a year, since there are a finite number of seconds in year, and one cannot exceed the speed of light.
A more practical limit may be 1000 miles every three days, which would be about 100,000 miles in a year.
I suggest using a normal slider but with a logarithmic scale.
i.e. equal spaced ...
32
I've always been enamored at the way the iOS quicktime application works when viewing MP3s in Safari, and
I think this method can be adapted for your use. We can stay with a normal slider bar - perhaps the handle
could be changed from the normal circle to show a difference. We can add tick marks to the bar and numbers
that change on either end. Then, ...
30
The short answer to the high level UX question here is -- it depends -- so here are a few cases why a company like discourse might choose to put click counters next to their hyperlinks along with things to watch out for...
I'm new here what does everyone else click?
Sometimes when I visit a new restaurant I'll ask the waiter what most people order. This ...
29
Old style figures are used in titles and paragraph text. According to Fonts.com old style is suitable for title and paragraph text due to the fact that this gives the text uniform look. The 'modern' style numbers should be used for tables and graphs, since these modern numbers align better when used in these contexts.
There are fonts that support both old ...
29
I recently was playing around with a new type of pager control that only uses numbers and doesn't require any localization (next, previous, last, first, all function without any words required in the UI)
I modified it slightly to work in your case here. The idea is to be really clear to the user up front that they can't just type anything they want because ...
27
/EDIT - This answer was posted before it was clear that the number is a status higher/lower indicator, so the answer content here is less relevant now the question has been updated.
Yes, you still need the sign. -1 is a number. Sure, you don't need the + symbol for positive numbers because 1 is a number itself, but you can't represent a negative number ...
26
Yes. English text is usually left-aligned. Numbers are normally aligned so that the various places (unit, tens, etc.) are in columns. If the numbers are integers, this just means right-aligning the numbers. If they have decimal fractions, then the decimal places should be aligned, with the units digits all in a vertical line.
This makes it easy to compare ...
25
The best way to cover long numbers on small devices is to use the K, M, B values; such as 10K, 10.51M etc...
As per layout try resizing this codepen, you'll get an idea https://codepen.io/geoffyuen/pen/FCBEg
This page has couple of good examples to consider.
22
Line numbers need to be countable. It is more intuitive to start counting at 1 instead of 0, because 0 (say: zero) means none, not one.
Looking at a coffee mug on your table, you would not answer the question of how many mugs there are by saying: "Zero" - because that would imply no mug at all is on your table. Thus with line numbers, and almost every other ...
22
If you ask me, you can give a rough approximation of the actual quantity. Don't exaggerate too much. Suppose you have 1379 books. You don't say you have 2000 books. That's just too much. Also, you wouldn't want to reveal the correct number either.
Just speak out these sentences to a friend and ask him which sounds the best, which I believe will be the one I ...
21
Consistency is key here I think.
So, for currency, always use two decimals and align every number to the right.
It took me some time to make sense of the table you displayed in your post. I would go for something like this:
tender qty amt
5.00 1 5.00
10.00 1 10.00
100.00 1 100.00
0.05 1 0.05
0.10 1 ...
21
One interesting solution that hasn't been proposed yet is a sort of "odometer" that the users could set to the desired number. This would have the benefits of preventing users from having to scroll through smaller numbers to get to larger ones, allowing users to be as precise as they wish, and being as simple as plain text entry without messing with a ...
19
According to, literally, the first result when you google discourse click count, Jeff Atwood defends the click counter as a valuable signal for users to determine if a link is worth clicking:
The purpose of links is to be clicked, their entire existence is predicated on being clicked at some point, and showing the click data gives you, THE READER, ...
18
Yes, this is a "standard". I am >25 too and I know where to look up this guideline :-)
This is guideline 2.3/16 in: Smith S. L., Mosier J. N. (1986) Guidelines for Designing User Interface Software (ESD-TR-86-278), Bedford: The MITRE Corporation | http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/g.w.m.rauterberg/lecturenotes/DA308/MITRE(1986)smith-mosier.pdf
Authors ...
18
I like to compare old-style numbers to lowercase, and new-style to capitals. Some typographers even talk about 'lowercase' and 'uppercase numbers'.
To my eyes, using UPPERCASE in the middle of a sentence seems odd, also when using numbers in the text. old-style numerals just 'flow' better with the rest of the lowercase letters in a sentence. When available, ...
17
Kontur is correct. But I would also like the add that Arrays in programming start at 0 for a very specific reason. This is not because the number in an array is supposed to 'count' the amount of elements, but instead it is considered an offset value, and thus array[0] merely means that the specific entry is 0 memory positions away from the start of the array ...
17
Take this example: 01/02/07.
At first look, it could be anything. Now, let's make it YYYY: 01/02/2007.
Quite a bit of difference, right? This is one of the main reasons for the YYYY format. Very few datapoints are in 2-digit / 2-digit / 4-digit format, and this helps avoid a bit of confusion.
16
Regardless of the mix of types of data in one table, the data type in the individual column should drive the alignment.
Typical alignments (and of course, there are always reasons and ways to do differently)
Text and items treated like text: Left Align (caveat: I find numbers
always easiest to read rt aligned)
Numbers and items treated like numbers: Right ...
15
Using words isn't a bad idea at all. It's the most 'easy to understand' way for everyone.
You can make a dropdown list after the input, containing:
No unit
Thousand
Million
Milliard
The "no unit" option is for small amounts. Plus you can give people the chance to manually type all the zeroes if they want (or even the mathematical abbreviations, like 2x10^...
13
I don't have any data about this question, neverthless here my thought: Readability is much better for right aligned numbers. Why? Consistency. The Decimal points always stays at the same location, decimal separators too. So it is much easier for a user to identify how big a number is.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
...
13
4 digits is time-tested chunking for large numbers
3 to 4 digit chunks are easy to read accurately. Perceptually, the eye tends to read words and not letters across a page, and a 3-4 letter word allows the eye to read the end points and the middle letters of the word accurately without disorientation. Once the word gets too long, the letters in the middle ...
12
No you should not use the sign alongside that arrow.
"↓ -13" is potentially interpreted as a double negative.
You pick one method to indicate the sign. Either you use + or - (and omitting the + is understood), or you use some other glyph, like an up/down arrow, as you have here. (Of the two, the standard numerical spelling is far superior in general ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
