Grids of thumbnails or icons
Allan Day
aday@gnome.org
Christian Kirbach
christian.kirbach@gmail.com 2014

# Gitter

A grid is one of the primary methods of presenting collections of content in GNOME 3. Grids are often combined with a number of the other design patterns, including search and selection mode.

# When to use

Since the grid view utilizes an image for each item it presents, it is best suited to content that has a visual component, such as documents or photos. If content items don't have a visual component, a list view might be more appropriate.

Grids and lists can be combined, to offer different views of the same content. This can be useful if content items have additional metadata associated with them, such as creation dates or authorship.

# General guidelines

Wherever possible, each item of content should have a unique thumbnail.

Order the items in the grid according to what will be most useful to people using your application. Ordering content according to most recently used is often the best arrangement.

Selecting an item in the grid will typically switch to a dedicated view of that item.

Consider combining the grid view search, selection mode and collections.

# API reference

GtkFlowBox

GtkIconView