Nov 30
The Mozilla Firefox 1.5 web browser has been released!
Nov 27
Microsoft tries to encourage developers to create a high quality, consistent Windows Vista user interface UI. Therefore Microsoft published the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines. The goals for the officials Microsoft® Windows Vista™ User Experience Guidelines (or “UX Guide”) are to:
- Establish a high quality and consistency baseline for all Windows Vista-based applications.
- Answer your specific user experience questions.
- Make your job easier!
The following sections describe the top interface rules of the UX Guide:
1. Use the Aero Theme and System Font (Segoe UI)
You should use the Windows themes and the standard System Font Segeo UI. Microsoft Typography has developed the font by using the advantages of Cleartype for making it more readable.
Microsoft uses this new font in Vista with 8pt and Office 12 with 9pt per default. The following screenshot display a comparison between Segeo UI and Tahoma fonts.
Click to view the image in full size.
2. Use common controls and common dialogs
You should use the common controls and common dialogs to achieve an accessible, high-quality and consistent UI in your application. The following screenshot displays the Open file, Save As and some standard buttons.
3. Use the standard window frame, use glass judiciously
Use the standard window frame. The new “Aero Glass”, as seen in Vista translucent window frames, is an important part of the new aesthetic.
Optimize for resizable windows using a standard screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, but also support 800×600 pixels.
4. Use icons and graphics consistent with the Windows Vista style and quality
Render icons in all sizes needed but optimize their design for the sizes most often seen by users. For example, Explorer can display icons up to 256 x 256 pixels, but toolbar icons are limited to 24 x 24 pixels.
5. Use task dialogs for new or frequently used dialog boxes and error messages
Dialog boxes are the most fundamental form of user communication. Dialog boxes with a clear main instruction and explicit, self-explanatory commit buttons make that communication much more effective.
6. Use Aero Wizards
Aero Wizards replaces Wizard ’97 with a cleaner, simpler, better-looking design with theme support. Its page layout is much more flexible and can be resizable
7. Use Explorer-hosted, navigation-based user interfaces, provide a Back button
Navigation-based user interface—characterized by staying in a single window and having a Back button in the upper-left corner—allows users to navigate easily, efficiently, and confidently; they can always ‘go back’. Even traditional applications that don’t inherently ‘navigate’ can often benefit from providing in-frame navigation.
8. Use the standard Windows Search
With the Search feature, users can quickly locate specific objects or text within a large set of data by filtering or highlighting matches. In Windows Vista, Search is part of all Explorer windows and appears and behaves consistently, making it easy to find and recognize.
9. Use the Windows Vista tone in all UI text
Use the Windows Vista “tone” to inspire confidence by communicating to users on a personal level by being accurate, encouraging, insightful, objective, and user focused. Don’t use a distracting, condescending (for example, “Just do this…”), or arrogant tone.
10. Clean up the user interface
Remove clutter, unify surfaces visually, and make the UI look well organized and thought through.
11. Use notifications judiciously
When used correctly, notifications are an effective way to keep users informed. Notifications are ideal for useful, relevant, non-critical information because their peripheral, non-modal presentation doesn’t break users’ flow.
12. Reserve development time for “fit and finish”!
To deliver high-quality fit and finish, build in time to attend to UI details. Scheduling time for a visual clean-up at pixel level, layout corrections (alignment, spacing), and other visual “fit and finish” is as important as it is to schedule time for bug fixing and other types of quality control.
Nov 25
A quote from Edward Tufte:
“…If there is a well thought-out design standard, it should be followed. In practice, great design comes from great designers. That is empirically the case. If a great designer did a first-rate standard, that model should be followed. Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard…
Nov 23
For Linux to be a widely used desktop operating system it needs a unified desktop. Years ago the competition started for the widely used desktop environment. Up to data the KDE (K Desktop Environment) and the GNOME environment often used for Linux installation, in addition several others are available. Years ago a lot of people have argued that having multiple desktop solutions is an unsolvable problem. The new released Tango Desktop Project now tries to find a way for interoperate these desktop environments.
Tango, first announced at the Gnome boston summit, defines guidelines of user experience for the Linux platform. Currently it includes a set of style guides, naming conventions and icons. Have a look at the Tango project and help build a better free operating system!
Nov 22
del.icio.us known for its social bookmarking capabilities launched a completly new site layout. They now present the recent bookmarks on the left and the popular bookmarks on the right.
Nov 04
Google has done some usability studies on tabbed browsing with the Firefox web browser. They designed a study to see how well people responded to tabs and how easily they were able to switch between them and close them.
“The results showed that the set of people sampled were generally capable of recognizing the tab strip, and switching between documents. We found though that unpredictable behavior of the back button (new tab = blank session history) is still a problem, since users expect clicking back to go back. What we also found is that the users we sampled were by and large using the context menu to close tabs.
So here are a couple of things we have been experimenting with.
1. Put close buttons on the tabs. This makes it a lot easier to close tabs with the mouse. People weren’t seeing the close box in the usability test. It’s also out of the way and not connected with what’s actually being closed. Mindful of stealing space from the tab strip when there are many tabs, the close boxes on inactive tabs are hidden when the tab width falls below a certain minimum value.
2. Implement a simple heuristic for z-index handling. When a new tab is opened in the foreground by any operation (targeted link, external application link, Ctrl+T, etc.), set the new tab’s “owner” to be the tab that opened it. When the user closes it, select the owner, not the next adjacent. So that the mass-close condition doesn’t become annoying (with selection jumping around as many tabs are quickly closed), forget the owner property when the tab is switched away from. This more closely matches behavior of window z-index.
3. While we’re here, consolidate the preferences for links sent from external applications vs. targeted links internally into a single pref: “Open links that would open new windows in tabs” instead, since web applications are becoming more advanced to the point where it seems odd that clicking on a link in Thunderbird should open a link one way, but clicking on a link in GMail should open it a different way.”
(Source: The Inside Track on Firefox Development - Improving Tabbed Browsing)
I personally really like the tabbed browsing feature of Firefox and it could be greatly benefit by these research results. For implementing closable tabbed panes in Java, without changing L&F classes, have a look at Joerg Plewe’s Blog on ‘Close’ icons on a JTabbedPane w/o UI interference.
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