Our UI supports small (32px wide), medium (64px) and large buttons (96px).
Now need appeared to add 48px wide buttons and it would be nice not to rename all the rest, just to give them a name which will fit them between 'small' and 'medium'. Can you suggest that?
Informal names are okay.
As a neologism, it can be smedium
There are urbandictionary entries also. Here is one:
when a size small is too small and the size medium is too big you are a size smedium!!
They don't have my size I can't fit the small or the medium if only they had a smedium!
Other than that, you can use different degrees of small like extra small. So small fits between extra small and medium.
Note: I treated the question as context-free as well for future reference. You can also get useful answers about user interface/technical approaches on ux.stackexchange.com
Keeping the same convention, combine the two?
Small, Medium-small, Medium, Large
I go with "medium-small" (with or without the hyphen).
The size between medium and small is like the direction between North and West (Northwest)
Similarly, the size between Medium and Large is Medium-Large,
This also fits nicely with how we order steaks: Rare Medium-Rare Medium Medium-Well Well Done
smaller might be OK as long as you take medium to mean 'normal'.
Not quite the same as CSS font-size 'smaller' but I think the meaning is clear, it's not medium and it's not small.
smallish if you prefer.
Learn the lesson not to call 'styles' by a common enumeration, small=size32, medium=size64, large=size96. Then you can add in as many different sizes as you want, you can easily slip in a size48 without worrying about any knock on effect to other styles.
Several user interfaces use compact as another word for “small.” For example, Gmail and Google Docs offer compact controls as a slightly-tighter-than-medium setting. It’s also an established term for small cars.
small (32px wide), small-plus (48px), medium (64px), medium-plus (80px) and large (96px).
Adding plus immediately after the adjective effectively shows it is the next size up, and it's easily shortened to small + and medium +
You should probably bite the bullet and rename your existing "small" to "extra small", then call your new size "small". Every other answer, although valid, will confuse your users.
Personally, I would add the exact sizes to all the buttons and leave the 48 pixel button without a second label.
Small (32 px) -- (48 px) -- Medium (64px) -- Large (96 px)
I'm seriously considering SUBMEDIUM as 'smaller than medium'.
It doesn't clearly state to be middle between the two but gives a clear depiction of the order.
small / medium / large / jumbo
I like the idea of creating an extra size on the large end of the spectrum rather than the small end of the spectrum because of the difference in sizes.
32 / 48 / 64 have a difference of 16 between them and 64 / 96 have a difference of 32.
"Jumbo" is also a fun word and seems to connote inordinately large.
I used to work at a concession stand that had only one size of drink. Only the drink price was listed. People would often ask what size it was. I would say, "We only have one size: double extra jumbo!" poking fun at the crazy names and sizes of portions in movie theaters.
How about "MS" for "medium small?"
"Under-medium" or "medium-minus" would leave room for "over-small" or "small-plus".
"grande"
If Starbucks can create an arbitrary and dissonant list of names for a partial ordering of volumes, so can you.
I have done a lot of websites with inventory (mainly this applies to shirts) and have always combined. I am leaving this as my own answer because every other answer is combining the opposite as I have seen/used. To me it is always the smallest first.
Here are the default sizes I set in the back end for shirts for one company.
- xxx-small
- xx-small
- x-small
- small
- small/medium
- medium
- medium/large
- large
- x-large
- xx-large
- xxx-large
- xxxx-large
- xxxxx-large
Note that this is the available options I have for the store to choose from. I don't think they have ever chosen all for one shirt. For instance most women clothing goes from x-small to xx-large. Also they might not use any of the "in-between" sizes. You really shouldn't do this unless you are very very specific on what size your small and medium would be. The only differences between sites is that some use the dash - so "small-medium", some abbreviate - so "s/m", and some use numbers for the x's - so "4x-large". Never used a bigger size first nor a smedium. Might be a cool size for a drink but I am not sure a serious site would use it for clothing or something like that.
smallish, not completely small, just a little bit.
Small-medium.
That way you get to have no digits in the name of the size and it's pretty obvious what the size is without context (unlike other confusing propositions).
Analogically to compass point naming convention, 48px would be right between 32px and 64px on your scale.
32 px 48 px 64 px 72 px 92 px
Small − Small-Medium − Medium − (Medium-Large) − Large
Would Thumbnail work?
Wordpress uses Thumbnail as the description for its small image sizes.
Wikipedia description for Thumbnail:
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words.
For my user interface elements, I've adopted Bootstrap's sizing system: xs, sm, md, lg. It works nicely in all my scenareos.
Glad to be of help!
You could take a nod from TeX and use capitalisation provided that it fits your use case.
small -> Small -> SMALL -> medium -> Medium -> MEDIUM -> large -> Large -> LARGE
...would be your new spectrum of possibilities.
Using Sydney coffee sizes as a guide, how about Regular or Normal?
