Any good blogs/articles/ books on designing highly scalable systems? Good source code for studying would help a lot too.
Best blog I know of: http://highscalability.com/
Some good articles & case studies here
I would recommend reading the OTP material of Erlang.
This blog is focused on fundamentals of performance and scalability: http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/
Related
I'm looking to find any articles/books on usability. I'd like to get a handle on best practices when designing a UI, this can be anything from which user controls are more intuitive to a new user, to how to phrase text that is displayed to the user to avoid confusing dialogs. I mainly do Windows desktop applications, but most usability standards, I assume, would stand true regardless of the platform.
As an example, here's an MSDN article about the Windows User Experience Guidelines:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx
Try reading this book: Don't Make Me Think. While it's focused on web usability it is applicable to all facets of UI design.
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman is a standard book on general usability considerations that can be applied to just about everything in day-to-day life. It's not specifically about software, but it's worth it to read it.
Universal Principles of Design is a recommended textbook for my university's Engineering Methods of Software Usability course. Myself, and others who have taken this course, have found this book to be more useful than the required textbook. There appears to be an updated version, called Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design, but I can't speak about that one.
Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives
by Joel Spolsky (one of the guys behind this site)
when designing UI, please do consider accessibility as well. it's mostly relevant for web sites, but could also be applicable for rich client (desktop apps).
so, these links has a lot of info on the subject, though it's not pure usability info.
a good resource on usability and accessibility:
Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web
you might find this check list useful:
Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
and also this tool that will check your web site accessibility:
web aim
Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell is pretty good.
Well, a long-standing favorite specifically for user interface design is Alan Cooper's About Face. It should touch most important topics when designing Windows desktop applications.
Then there are also various UX patterns which are well-presented in Quince (needs Silverlight).
Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface is also rather good, but very radical in his ideas. Still, this book points out many fallacies in modern UI design. If you need to stick to the WIMP world, then following his suggestions might be a little hard as he tends to suggest to overthrow everything we're used to. But well-written and good for provoking thoughts, even if you don't follow all his advice.
As for books/articles on usability in general or on slightly different topics:
Jakob Nielsen's website useit.com. While not particularly fancy-designed it is a trove of thoughts and advice on usability in general.
Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. Web usability, but also a very good read.
Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. Usability in general and has many pointers on how to think about usability without going into specific technologies. It's applicable to desktop application usability anyway, though.
Regarding articles, try Boxes and Arrows
Designing Visual Interfaces by Mullet and Sano provides a great foundation for different layout-related issues. Not a book on usability per se but still relevant, I'd say.
As for web resources, try:
useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website
Usable Web
A List Apart on usability
For book inspiration, see Suggested Readings in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), User Interface (UI) Development, & Human Factors (HF) (and all the great answers in this thread).
My favorite usability blog contains very well-constructed, insightful and thoughtful posts, by David Hamill.
You can find his blog at goodusability.co.uk
Enjoy.
I read articles from http://ui-patterns.com/ and http://www.uxbooth.com/. Those have been helpful for me.
I would like to second uxbooth.com - we recently had an article published there which might be what you are looking for - check it out at http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/usability-testing-dont-guess-test/
usefulusability.com
is another good site, they regularly have good articles up there.
Oh, and another article we had published recently:
www.1stwebdesigner.com/development/usability-ux-pitfalls-howto-avoid/
I think this one provides some pretty good examples of issues that frequently pop up, and how to avoid them.
And if you are looking to run a simple usability test, what not check us out at IntuitionHQ.com
Good luck!
I am looking for nice looking sites that are good in terms of look and feel as well as usability.
Someone had to say it: Stack Overflow!
Seriously - it may not be immediately beautiful to look at, but for what it is, and for its target audience and how they use it, it's a great example of both visual design and interaction design.
The layout, the use of colour, the sensible use of AJAX, the lack of fancy graphics, all give a good experience IMHO.
It's also a good example of how to incorporate advertising in an effective but unobtrusive way.
Google.
It gets out of the way as much as possible and lets you focus on doing what you came there to do.
I think this is question is much like Share good examples of Web-GUIs question that was post in the site sometime ago. probably it will help you.
Zen Garden - beauty but especially showing you what different things can be done with pure accessible HTML. So having Usability in mind as well.
I don't know what kind/segment of site you want. But I`ll mention one that is kind of site to create site that helped me to create fast and beautiful things.
www.snappages.com is a example of nice/easy/friendly/pretty/dummyFriendly/niceExamples/easyToCreatePrettyThings/easyToMaintain/etc...
I really think that is a 'must know place'
Cheers :)
I think gmail is an example of a very usable UI.
I've always found that other people's great web sites are more of an inspiration than a practical help. Every site has particular needs. For example, this site is good for what it does, but it really isn't a site I need to build; likewise for this one and this one.
I think it is valuable to develop a philosophy/aesthetic for this, or at least be conversant with those who think a lot about design and accessibility. Here are two sites with some serious discussion along these lines, along with some coding howto:
http://stopdesign.com/
http://www.456bereastreet.com/
But even these reflect my personal taste. There are people in my family who really like Club Penguin. And I hear some folks can tolerate MySpace.
There must be many online resources for good user interface design principles. I'd like to see an easily-browsed list, perhaps categorized by desktop vs. on-line (or maybe not; that might be too limiting).
Any examples out there?
The List (so far)
A List Apart
Designing Web Interfaces
Jakob Nielsen's useit.com
Quince
Smashing Magazine
Usability Post
Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Designing Web Interfaces
I honestly think that StackOverflow really has a well thought out UI. Access to most everything is intuitive and efficient.
I've already changed some of my own interfaces based on things I have seen here.
Quince by Infragistics has a pretty good selection.
A List Apart
also, Smashing Magazine is pretty good.
as is Usability Post
A List Apart provide articles about design and also how to make them standards compatible.
Don't miss Jakob Nielsen's useit.com website.
You might be looking for "design patterns," common ways we present and perform interactions, such as those discussed in Jenifer Tidwell's book, Designing Interfaces. Her book's site links to her original pattern library, Common Ground, as well, but the book is a good one to own.
Yahoo! has a Design Pattern Library, focused on web design patterns, and Quince was mentioned in a previous comment.
http://designingwebinterfaces.com/, the accompanying website to the homonym book has some good patterns.
I'm looking for a site or book or any other source of tiny programming tasks one can implement in preferred language. Would be great if examples are present too. And would be superb if there're people who may review my code. May be there's a wiki of such tasks. I've tried to google, but found nothing that suits my needs.
I want to improve my skills in programming using certain language but don't have specific task at hand. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Project Euler and the Facebook Puzzles are oft-touted examples.
There's a book called "Programming Pearls" by Jon Bentley which is definitely worth reading and trying out...
Chris Rathman is one of at least a few people I've seen who are working the exercises in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs in multiple languages. I'm currently still in the Scheme phase, but it seems like a neat exercise to me!
Try sourceforge, there are many interesting projects and many of them are looking for volunteers.
Where would one find information or just rather good ideas on what is considered proper programming ethics or methodology of how to format the code, comments, or even variable names so that it is easier to read the code at a later time?
Thanks!
The book Code Complete 2 is a timeless reference for good coding practice.
The absolute 'must-read' for you is Robert C. Martin's book Clean Code. Do give it a try. It makes some awesome points. I keep recommending to everyone ever since I bought it 6 months ago.
Edit
I thought reading my Amazon review could help :)
You're asking for Coding Standards, which are language specific.
For C# check out The IDesign C# Coding Standard (on the right-side of the screen in the middle of the page)
For .NET in general see Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries
For C++ check here
For Java see Sun's resource Code Conventions for the JavaTM Programming Language
For C++ I use the C++ google style guide
Including Code Complete and Clean Code I would recommend you to read "The pragmatic programmer" and "Ship it!". The last books mentioned are not so much about how to format the code, comments, ect. but rather about best practices for developers and development.
Three books I consider essential for beginning OO programmers.
"Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code".
Although modern IDEs often support automatic refactor, this book is still useful. By knowing the reason (or code smell) behind a particular refacoring, you can strive to write the correct code the first time.
"Pragmatic Programmer"
A wealth of best practices.
"Design Pattern"
Most advanced book, but still useful.
Clean Code is certainly a good book. Martin's Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# is my recommendation if you want a more .NET specific book.