Microsoft Vista User Interface Guidelines Published

SEMW writes "Microsoft has published the preliminary Official User Interface Guidelines for Windows Vista. Highlights include Top 12 Rules for the Windows Vista User Experience — and the use of screenshots from Windows XP as examples of what not to do. The full guidelines are as yet incomplete, but what is there makes for interesting reading."

Comments

To do it right...

[jcr]

Step One: write an app for the Mac.
Step Two: get your UI reviewed by Apple's user interface evangelist, John Geleynse.
Step Three: make all the changes recommended by Apple.
Step Four: write a windows app that comes as close as you can get to your Mac version.

Or, you can do what the people who wrote Visio or that guy who ripped off Delicious Library did, and just laboriously copy an existing app knowing that you'll never make it quite the same on Windows.

-jcr

Integrity?

[medoc]

From the article:

Perception is reality, and if your customers don't experience quality in your product throughout, they may conclude there is lack of quality everywhere. A visual bug seen by all your customers might do more damage to your program's reputation than a rarely occurring crashing bug.

Mind your icons, not your buffer overflows. Great! Will exploits follow the Vista guidelines too ?

Two things catched my eye

[Sun]

The first - the design guidelines (10 out of the 12 listed) are focused on appearance rather than on functionality. Making sure your icons look great (#4) comes long before producing a clean interface (#10).

The second is that this document carries a severe undertone of "make sure your app only works on Vista, and looks out of place on anything other than Aero". The entire document keeps saying "use Vista only API whenever you can" and "visually design the application to look out of place when not using the Vista UI" (with a few exceptions).

I guess this is how MS are trying to fight the competition formed by previous OSes being good enough. They try to make sure new applications don't work on them any more.

Shachar

Yes/No dialogs again

[roskakori]

One of the worst misfeatures of Windows (and its developer community) is the retarded design of dialogs. AFAIK the pre-Vista API has a bunch a simple functions to do Yes/No and Ok/Cancel dialogs, but nothing to label buttons sensibly. So it's quite common to have a dialog with "Yes" and "No" buttons, and and huge text explaining what these options mean. Despite the fact that every at least semi-decent article or book about dialog design recommends to use verbs for button labels.

I recently read that Vista finally offers an API to easily change the button labels. Yeah! And guideline 5 (Use task dialogs for new or frequently used dialog boxes and error messages) specifically recommends:

Use positive commit buttons that are specific responses to the main instruction instead of generic labels (such as "OK"). Users should be able to quickly grasp the options by reading the button text alone. Always start commit button labels with a verb.

Yeah again!

However, above this guideline we can see a screenshot of the classic, super retarded Windowesque "Save changes? Yes/No/Cancel" dialog.

I suggest for the final document they just copy this dialog from any random Mac OS application and put a Vista theme on it.

Don't dumb it down. Not all your users are dumb.

[oyenstikker]

Present choices * and settings in terms of user goals, not technology. Use everyday words when you can. This is especially
effective if you are explaining a complex technical concept or action. Imagine you are looking over the user's shoulder and explaining how to accomplish the task.

Technology-based:
* Enable Internet Connection Sharing host
* Manual Duplex

Goal-based:
* Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection.
* Print on both sides of the paper.

This tendancy annoys me more and more with ever release of Windows, for many reasons:
1) Most everybody knows what "duplex" means. Why not let those who don't learn what it means instead of pretending the word doesn't exist, and encouraging people to forget.
2) When I am on the phone with a user, I can say "look for the options that says something like "Internet Connection Sharing". Most users will not find the goal-based option, as it does not include the word "sharing".
3) I know what I'm looking for. I know what it was called in NT4, 2000, and 2003 server. Now I have to read paragraphs and guess that "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection" is Internet Connection Sharing and not Web Proxy.
4) It encourages the user to not learn about the very complex piece of equipment he just bought. If you provide a good searchable manual instead of dumbing everything down, the program will be easier to use, and the user will learn more.

Imagine if your grill didn't say "Ignite" above the red button, but "Make the fire start", or if your toaster didn't say "Toast", but "Make your bread crispy", or if your car didn't say "ABS", but "Automatically remove and reapply pressure on the brake so your car doesn't skid. Don't pump your brakes".

This is slashdot, so I need to reference either Orwell or Rand:
Or are they trying to reduce English to a smaller set of simple words that everybody can understand? Double-plus ungood.