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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."
So I guess we can take these rules as a fairly good indicator of what interface features the next version of Office will NOT follow. It's been my impression that whatever interface guidelines MS publish, they always seem to very rapidly diverge from them in the own applications.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Be polite, supportive, and encouraging. The user should never feel condescended to, blamed, or intimidated.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
That's a really bitching Notepad icon. They've clearly been hard at work.
ResidntGeek
"Keep the user guessing."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Do not install Vista. :)
> examples of what not to do
Updates complete. Restart now?
What about now?
Now?
Now?
Now?
Just wanted to know if I should restart now?
What about now?
Are you ready to restart?
Shall I restart now?
Should I not restart later?
I think I should restart now.
Wouldn't it be good if I restarted now?
Who's up for a restart??
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How I hate software that install all of that in their Start Menu entries. Or programs that insist they go into "C:\Program Files\My Stupid Software Company Inc\My Stupid Program".
Talking about reform, I find the most illogical thing of user interfaces is the menubar.. how do you exit? Go to "File". Where are the options? Under "Tools".. why can't somebody offer a totally new way of making the menu. Start with "Program", where you have "Options" and "About" (maybe "Help" too), then "Document" or "File", and then "Edit", etc.. We're so used to File -> Exit that we stop thinking how illogical such a construct is... exit the file?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
From the article:
Mind your icons, not your buffer overflows. Great! Will exploits follow the Vista guidelines too ?
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
Vista user experince... for crap. I spent the past couple of months testing this OS, and when my gaming XP boot feels like a safe haven, I know that something is definitely wrong. For migrating XP users, the interface feels counter-intuitive. Even more telling, my college-going roommate has only ever known Red Hat (thank you very much, he has only ever known linux on the front-room computer), and for him the simplest task, like installing Firefox (where's the package?) was torture (not to say there has been a change here). I became so frustrated with ctrl-esc,r yielding a "r" in the ever-so-laggy search sub-start dialogue (instead of a run window) tonight that I just blew out the whole partition. I actually wanted to run iexplore for once! I am downloading Mandrake 64 now, thank the creator.
I found Vista to be too heavy on the eye candy, and it seemed that "power tools" and control panel received heavy design attention, while the ~deeper~ apps like regedit and msconfig are the same old barf. Vista = skinned XP != new OS. Meh. Shiny? Yes. New? No.
FairTax baby!
Do NOT install Vista. ;-)
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I just loved this bit;
"# Focus on what users really need to know. Don't avoid important text--be explicit whenever necessary--but don't be redundant or verbose. Because users often scan text, make every word count. Simple, concise text not only saves screen space, it most effectively conveys an important idea or action.
# Remove redundant text. Look for redundant text in window titles, main instructions, supplemental instructions, content areas, command links, and commit buttons. Generally, leave full text in instructions and interactive controls, and remove any redundancy from the other places.
glad to see MS don't break their own rules!
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
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:
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.
Now if an application were written properly this wouldn't be an issue -- the application would have a thread dedicated to UI work and in theory the interface should be highly responsive, but you're trusting all the application developers to implement their programs properly and not even Microsoft is capable of setting a good example. Their OS would almost not suck if they'd just fix this one design flaw and I'm going to keep blowing this horn until they do.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Their common dialog box is still yes no cancel. While gnome and kde (i think) has adopted a different and in my opinion far better strategy.
People are afraid of doing things wrong. Especially at a computer, as they have learned that a computer is *VERY* unforgiving. Turn it off, and your document isn't saved, you get chkdsk errors, your operating system does not start, you have to pay your local guru big bucks or a bottle of wine to keep the damn thing running. Turn the TV off and on again and it all works. You need to treat the computer with respect. So you say (err - click) yes to it - all of the time.
Do you want to save the document: Yes
Do you want do delete the folder: Yes (o shit)
Do you want to uninstall this application: Yes (where were these disks again)
Do you want to format this disk: Yes
Now, look at gnome. That interface is talking to you in a quite different way. When you close gedit (the notepad equivalent) without saving, it will tell you
Do you want to save the document 'xyz'
If you don't save it, your changes of the last n seconds will be lost
[Don't Save] [Cancel] [Save]
Now that is informative, and i really have to make a meaningful choice. I need to choose between Save and Don't Save. Or I pick cancel which will surely take me back to the previous state.
Much better than the windows common control, which has been devised in Windows 2.0 (I kid you not) and still in Windows fscking Vista, noone has had the courage to reread 'About Face' and reshape it.
Sigh
Mark
But will MS follow their own rules? Hold on a sec . . .
Anyway, given the many complaints on Vista's security, it would seem MS isn't following their own rules--
While there maybe good reason to lock down Vista, you would think that MS would make it less annoying--
WTF? %$%#&@!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.