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There are many applications for Windows these days that don't use native windows controls, don't have standard window frames and generally look different. What are some recommended techniques for creating such interfaces?
There are good reasons not to. Like that you will most likely not do a better job than Windows does. (Maybe it will look better (in your opinion), but will it behave?). Or that it's not what most users expect. Or that it will look like s**** on Windows 2011.
That said, it's not hard. You simply handle the WM_NC* events like WM_NCPAINT or WM_NCHITTEST. NC stands for Non Client (window area). And of course, there is a trick on Vista/Win7 (you have to announce it to the DWM).
From an implementation aspect, you could employ WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) assuming you code for .NET :) It has pretty bunch of skinnable controls, that may look like native and may not.
From a design aspect, if your interface isn't going to follow documented standards (like the Windows UI guidelines), it has to be intuitive. I think the new generation of Windows applications will go through a growing phase in a manner similar to the early days of the Web. After a time, some standards or common themes will evolve.
Can you give us some sample applications? Some apps that don't use native windows controls use cross-platform GUI libraries, like Qt for C++ or Tkinker. These maintain the same look across different platforms.
I wouldn't really recommend making your user interface different deliberately. You don't stand to gain much. Your controls are almost always going to be buggier than native controls, and you are requiring the user to learn something new. Now, if you're controls add a large enough value to be worth the users' time it can be okay. But making them get used to different looking buttons is rarely worth it.
I`m not sure if this answer your question.
You can use third party skinning controls like from Infragistics, or SkinSoft for example.
But like Bubba said I`d recommend going for WPF.
Model-View-Controller! It's as valuable here as in web apps or anywhere else. Be sure to keep the part of your program that generates the custom UI separate from the part of your program that flashes the BIOS.
I know this question is 10 years old but none of the answers mention using an option in visual studio, dont know if it existed at the time.
Theres an option to remove the border of the window in visual studio (called borderStyle). Thats the easiest way to do it, using C#. After removing the border, all you have to do is create a new interface. If you're looking to do it in C++, i think you need to use DWM. I will let an example i found here.
https://github.com/melak47/BorderlessWindow
Another example (maybe without DWM? didnt test):
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/b98c4c06-9581-44d3-8e5a-4adb2316e653/win32-about-styles-how-can-i-do-a-borderless-window?forum=vclanguage
There is a lot of people disencouraging to do it in this thread but there's no reason to not do it, if you know what you're doing your application can look great.
I have been playing around with php-gtk recently and in the past I have experimented with Java to make GUI 'hello world' apps.
However both these types of applications have had a bit of a clunky (almost childish) look and feel to them. I cannot deny that they are handy for making apps for in-house use (and I totally respect the amount of community effort that goes into these projects). But I would not necessarily be proud to sell it as a commercial application with a price tag of, say, £450 or £1,000.
If I wanted to make an application that had the look and feel of, say, Firefox for Windows, or Adobe xyz, what GUI/language should I use?
Is the 'professional sheen' or smart look and feel 100% down to the designers or is it the case that, no matter how good a designer is, picking the right GUI framework is essential to get that look?
There are a few aspects to having a polished UX for a piece of software.
Using the most native framework for the platform. Win32/WPF for Windows, Cocoa for Mac etc.
Application's visual artefacts are coherent - this includes images, graphics, toolbar icons etc.
Following the platforms guidelines and best practices.
It's overlapping a bit with Igor's reply, but here's my take:
Native Control Look - UI controls today have a rather complex appearance. There are many visual cues we instinctively derive from them, and even if it's a white rectangle with some frame, with the wong shadow it looks strangely out of place. A context menu often doesn't just open today, it slides in from some direction, or fades in.
Native Control Behavior - Even more complex than UI, there's a lot of detail to behavior: different context menus depending on click position, different "hot" areas when selecting or dragging items, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Attention to detail - There's a lot of consistent UI behavior to discover on any platform. Just the way arrow keys work in a tree control WRT selecting, opening and closing nodes.
Just look at Windows: Most non-native toolkits get the basic keyboard navigation wrong - Arrow keys, Home, End, PgUp and PgDown, behavior modified with Ctrl, extending selection with Shift gives up to 32 behaviors. Copy & Paste is traditionally with Ctrl+C/Ctrl+X/Ctrl+V and Shift+INS,Shift+DEL, and missing. Mouse double click often selects a word, mouse triple click sometimes a sentence, line or paragraph.
Response time and Muscle Memory - There are, basically, two UI operation modes:
act-look loop, where you wait for the response before deciding the next step,
playback from muscle memory, which is much faster and requires less mental processing ressources.
There are, however, two requirements for that: response must be uniform and "instant", and the next action must be registered correctly immediately (at least within 10 ms)
Often enough, with non-native toolkits, this gets hard by the response lagging behind one or two actions (the mind locks on the discrepancy), and by toolkits that take 50ms or more to show a menu, in which time a click isn't registered as intended.
A polished UI takes long to get right - A good control library can solve most of the per-control issues, but there's some final 10% taking 90% of the time, and you have control interactions. You have to try different approaches, you have to expect users with FPS-trained reflexes, you have to try all kinds of workflows.
Cross-Platform toolkits can't get it perfectly right - they are stuck between a rock and a hard place: They can opt for internal consistency independent of the platform, or being consistent with platform they currently run on. To get it right, the latter often requires platform-dependent code in the calling code, the actual thing you are trying to avoid.
Always try to use the GUI framework that's used by your desktop environment. .NET's libraries are probably the best for creating Windows apps. GTK+ is always the best on GNOME, while Qt works well on KDE - even though all three work on each other's systems, their visual appeal decreases with their lack of visual integration.
The GUI API/language used is utterly irrelevant to UI design, although some APIs make it easier or fasterto implement.
Good UI is about:
Good graphic design/artwork (visual balance and symmetry, complementary colours, visually 'pleasing' shapes and layouts, visual consistency within your app and with the other apps around it - consistent positioning, sizes, gaps, colours, etc)
Understanding the user's workflows and making what they want to do easy and intuitive. This often means implementing 3 or 4 ways of achieving the same action (e.g. "Copy and paste" can usually be achieved by: main-menu->copy/paste, context-menu->copy/paste, ctrl+c/v, button:copy/paste, drag-and-drop)
Keeping everything simple. Remove as much as possible to cut the UI back to just what the user needs and no more.
Being intuitive and not surprising the user. Controls should look like the controls the user knows, work like the controls the user knows, and be located in the places a user expects given their previous experience with the computer.
Following the conventions (position OK/Cancel buttons in the standard locations, use the OS-defined colours for highlighting selected objects etc)
To get this, you need to look at lots of "good" applications and dissect what makes them good. Get a good artist/graphic designer to draw you good icons etc. And spend a lot of time thinking about the user's workflows.
Make sure you separate the business logic from the UI - this will allow you to re-skin the app easily to improve the UI. And usually the data the program needs is not related to the way the user needs to use the application - don't be tempted to just expose your x,y,z variables in editable fields! UI is the layer that hides your implementation and makes it usable!
I don't care for the way Java application GUIs tend to look using the usual toolkits. If you like the way Firefox looks, you might look into XUL and the GUI framework shared by most Mozilla applications. Komodo Editor/IDE use the same tools (along with several other applications). GTK is very powerful, and I really doubt it is what is preventing your applications from having that professional sheen. Keep exploring it's features, and rethinking the best way to display your components, and I'm sure you'll stumble upon an arrangement that feels better.
On the other hand, it isn't all about the toolkit. Good interface design is an art, and interfaces like Firefox have evolved through endless amounts of feedback. The best thing to do is talk to users and find out what will make them more comfortable using your application. I've found that software tends to look good when it is also functional.
I would recommend spending a lot of time in software that you find pleasant to use. Make notes of the way things are done, and look for commonalities among interface elements. Most software sticks to a pretty common set of principles that make using the software easier, and the more you explore the software you find appealing, the sooner patterns will start to emerge.
Good luck!
For common elements, such as a logout button on a website, save button in an application, need to be presented to users in an standard, easily discoverable way. How do you go about deciding where in your application to place these elements? Do you research similar apps and try to follow convention? Is there any database that attempts to track the use of these common elements or is this too hard to capture?
The goal is to put UI elements where users expect to find them. You want to leverage the knowledge that they already have about how applications work.
So, looking at the the UI elements for the OS that you are targeting is helpful. Unfortunately, there are some key differences here between Windows and Mac, you will have to pick one or switch based on the OS if you target both.
Looking at applications that are similar to yours is generally not a good idea unless you believe that people using your product are already using these other products and you want them to switch.
Instead, you look at products that are complementary to yours, or products that you expect everyone is familiar with. At one point it was a good idea to look at Excel and Word to know how an Windows application should work; But I don't think that the current versions of Excel and Word are a good model, they deviate too much from the way the OS works. You could still use older versions - before the ribbon, if you are targeting Windows.
It's best to be a bit conservative, choosing applications that have been out for a while and people are likely to be comfortable with rather than chasing the latest design innovations that are coming out of Apple and Microsoft.
I research similar apps and try to follow convention...
E.g. logout goes up in the top right near the "X"/close in most applications
Save/Edit buttons towards the bottom of the thing I'm editing... since contextually they happen after I finish the editing I just did.
Then again, you have apps like Outlook... that have the send/save buttons at the top.
In general though... I have application-wide actions (e.g. login/logout/help user info at the top)
Item specific tend to be inline or just after the item they are adding/editing.
I totally agree with leveraging knowledge that the user already has. Every techie is (or probably is) familiar with http://www.dice.com. It frustrates me to no end to see that their website is designed with the logout "link" (not even a "button") at the very BOTTOM of the page. In this age of security conciousness, what a place to put a logout link ???
I have used DeLorme Street Atlas USA mapping software ever since Windows 3.1. About five or so years ago, they changed their entire user interface, moving AWAY from all of the features that make application software in the Windows environment easy to learn and navigate and SIMILAR from one application to another, and TO a totally foreign user interface, unique to their individual product offering.
Was it necessary ? probably not... What was it's impact to the current user community ? probably not thought about... What was it's impact to someone new to Street Atlas USA ?? Probably LESSENED the adoption rate of the software product, because it looked so foreign compared to a user's already-used applications developed with the common Windows-based look and feel.
Although books can be written on how "we" dislike Microsoft, the value-added benefit to Windows since it's infancy with Windows 3.1 was that you could create totally different software applications, but have a SIMILAR navigation style threaded throughout all of the applications, LESSENING the new application learning curve, and INCREASING the adoption rate amongst software applications for the Windows user.
Leveraging positive current user knowledge can only increase the adoption rate of a software product. Why re-invent the wheel, when the current wheel is known and adequate ?
I'm working on an VB6 app and I'd like to get rid of the old Sheridan controls and replace them with built in VB6 controls.
However, some of those controls have some nice properties, like the ForeGround on the ssCommand button. The standard VB6 command button doesn't have a foreground property.
I know that VB6 potentially has lots of other controls that I can enable but I'm not clear on which ones are fairly "standard" (i.e., not third party controls). I'd like to keep this app as plain vanilla as possible and not create dependencies. (Yes, I know that any components for VB6 have long sense become abandonware. I just anticipate a higher level of compatibility from a built in VB6 control since it was probably used more and thus "pounded on" more and it's flaws would be more known.
Any suggestions?
In my opinion threed32.ocx (the Sheridan SSControls) should be dropped because it has a number of problems. It's no longer supported, all the controls grab the focus when made visible including panels and frames (!), it's hard to upgrade to VB.NET - there are more. For my company these are strong enough to outweigh the extra functionality it gives - we're droppping it from all our programs.
Some of the discussion is too pessimistic IMHO. VB6 is not abandonware yet - we're not all doomed - though no doubt we will have to upgrade the code one day. Microsoft say:
The VB6 runtime is supported for the
full lifetime of Windows Vista,
Windows Server 2008 and Windows
7, which is five years of mainstream
support followed by five years of
extended support.
Microsoft are still supporting a number of their VB6 controls. Check the online list and only use the controls that they do support. These are the standard, tested, supported controls Clay is looking for in the original question. If you want to use third-party components, check whether they are still supported by the vendor. I would agree that you should always think hard about how much benefit you're getting before you introduce dependencies, which can be a support headache. If you use special components, try to wrap them in an abstraction layer. It might save some pain later if you need to replace them. You can hide all the fancy features except the ones you really need.
A final word - don't use the ForeColor property in the SSCommand. There's no corresponding BackColor property, so you have no guarantee that your special foreground colour will contrast with the system background "button face" colour. Just like Raymond says.
Sometimes a little ingenuity will go a long way. For instance, I wanted my VB6 command buttons to have custom background and foreground colors even though that violates the 'Windows standard look'; however, I wasn't ready to put out lots of bucks for that functionality since my projects are not commercial. So I tried a few things and finally settled on what, for me, is a very workable solution: I overlaid my buttons with label controls and now have multi-colored buttons that look absolutely authentic. I can control the button colors programatically to reflect various states of operation even going beyond a simple 'click / no-click' combination. One of my applications uses a group of five buttons which assume various colors depending on the combined button values.
I think keeping an app as 'plain vanilla' is a worthwhile goal. Certainly simplifies deployment.
I'd say the best way to find standard components for VB6 is to install VB6 (plus service packs) on a clean machine. All available components will be standard.
If you're unable to do this, for each checked Component or Reference in your project, research the file (dll, ocx, etc) referenced.
In this scenario, you're in for an uphill battle. Trying to eliminate dependencies on long-dead components is probably a good idea, but in a case like this, you're already on an abandoned technology. It's clear to me that rebuilding the app in more modern technology (EG, .NET) is not viable, so that leaves you with a limited set of options.
Replace the Sheridan controls with the existing VB6 controls which are a closest match, then update the code accordingly. This will be an intricate, difficult process, and you are correct in assuming that in many cases there won't be a match -- Sheridan (now Infragistics) built their business by providing UI capabilities which weren't in-box on VB6. In many cases, your UI will have to be seriously adapted to support this.
Consider writing "good enough" versions of the controls in VB6 yourself, or even .NET (the latter using advice from this StackOverflow question).
Consider replacing those controls with (likely long-since abandoned) open source VB6 controls. Google will be your friend here. The reason I recommend this route is that many UI elements have been represented in ActiveX over the years, as open source -- and if they're open source, you can at least "support yourself" on them.
I know you're going for a plain-vanilla out-of-box VB6 deployment, but for some UI elements, that may not be feasible. If you can rebuild your UI to #1 specs, then go for it, but you may have so much work cut out for you there that it might be time to consider going for the gusto and rebuilding on a modern, supported platform.
I've been through this, and you'll be long at it, and IMHO not very happy with the results.
VB6 can't be a long term solution anyway. Why not leave them in there? Yes they're abandoned, but I used them and never needed support anyway. (Plus it went to hell after the first time they were bought.) My experience was that they are pretty darn reliable. I'd just go with it, and if you have spot problems, provide spot workarounds.
I have to disagree with your reasoning. One might expect better support from someone whose living depends on you being a happy customer.
It's also likely to be the case that any vendor depending on VB6 sales is likely so go broke soon.
Why bother? If your product works then don't worry about it. I have found the Sheridan controls to be quite solid. If you're not experiencing any issues with them then leave them alone.
Is it worth to try to keep your GUI within the system looks ?
Every major program have their own anyways...
(visual studio, iexplorer, firefox, symantec utilities, adobe ...)
Or just the frame and dialogs should be left in the system look 'n feel range ?
update:
One easy exemple, if you want to add a close button to your tab, usually you make it against your current desktop theme. But if the user has a different theme, your close button is out of place, it doesn't fit the system look anymore.
I played with the uxtheme api, but there is nothing much you can do, and some themes i've seen are incomplete sets.
So to address this issue, the best way i see, is to do like visual studio/firefox/chrome roolup your own tab control with your theme...
I think, that unless your program becomes a very major part of the users life, you should strive to minimize "surprises" and maximimze recognizability (is that even a word?).
So, if you are making something that is used by 1.000 people for 10 minutes a day, go with system looks, and mechanisms.
If, on the other hand, you are making something that 100 people are using for 6 hours a day, I would start exploring what UI improvements and shortcuts I could cram in to make those 6 hours easier to deal with.
Notice however, that UI fixes must not come at the expense of performance. This is almost always the case in the beginning when someone thinks that simply overriding the OnPaint event in .Net will be sufficient.
Before you know it you are once again intercepting NC_PAINT and NC_BACKGROUNDERASE and all those little tricks to make it go as fast as the built-in controls.
I tend to agree with others here- especially Soraz and Smaci.
One thing I'll add, though. If you do feel that the OS L&F is too constraining, and you have good grounds for going beyond it, I'd strive to follow the priciple of "Pacing and leading" (which I'm borrowing here from an NLP context).
The idea is that you still want to capitalise as much as possible on your intended audidences familiarity with the host OS (there will be rare exceptions to this, as Smaci has already covered). So you use as much as possible of the "standard" controls and behaviours (this is the "pacing") - but extend it where necessary in ways that still "fit in" as much as possible (leading).
You've already mentioned some good examples of this principle at work - Visual Studio, even Office to some extend (Office is "special" as new UI styles that cut their teeth here often find their way back into future OS versions - or de-facto standards).
I'm bringing this up to contrast the type of apps that just "do it their way" - usually because they've been ported from another platform, or have been written to be cross-platform in GUI as well as core. Java apps often fall into this category, but they're not the only ones. It's not as bad as it used to be, but even today most pro audio apps have mongrel UIs, showing their lineage as they have been ported from one platform to another through the years. While there might be good business reasons for these examples, it remains that their UIs tend to suck and going this route should be avoided if in any way possible!
The overriding principle is still to follow the path of least surprise, and take account of your user's familiarity with the OS, and ratio of their time using your app to others on the OS.
Yes, if only because it enables the OS to use any accessability features that are built in like text-to-speech. There is nothing more annoying for someone who needs accessability features to have yet another UI that breaks all the tools they are used to.
I'd say it depends on the users, the application and the platform. The interface should be intuitive to the users, which is only the same as following system UI standards if they are appropriate for those users. For example, in the past I have been involved in developing hand held systems for dairy and bread delivery on Windows CE hand helds. The users in this case typically were not computer literate, and had a weak educational backround. The user interface focussed on ease of use through simple language and was modelled on a pre-existing paper form system. It made no attempt to follow the Windows look and feel as this would not have been appropriate.
Currently, I develop very graphical software for a user group that is typically 3rd level educated and very computer literate. The expectation here is that the software will adhere to and extend the Windows look and feel.
Software should be easy and intuitive where possible, and how to achieve this is entirely context dependent.
I'd like to reply with another question (Not really Stackoverflow protocol, but I think that, in this case, it's justified)
The question is 'Is it worth breaking the OS look and feel?'
In other words,
Do you have justification for doing so? (In order to present data in some way that's not possible within normal L&F)
What do you gain from doing so? (Improvinging usability?)
What do you lose from doing so? (Intuitiveness & familiarity?)
Don't simply do it 'To be different'
It depends on how wide you would define system look'n feel... But in general, you should keep it.
Do not surprise the user with differentiating from what he is used to. That's one of the reasons why we call him user ;-)
Firefox and Adobe products usually don't because they are targeting several plattforms which all have their own L&F. But Visual Studio keeps the typical Windows L&F. And, as long as you are developing only for Windows, so should you.
Apart from the fact that there is no well-defined look-n-feel on Windows, you should always try to follow the host platform native L&F. Note however that look-n-feel is just as much about how a program behaves as how it looks. Programs which behave in a counter-intuitive way is just as annoying as programs sporting their own ugly widgets.
Fraps is a good example (IMHO) of a program which is actually very useful, but breaks several user interface guidelines and looks really ugly.
If you're developing for Apple's Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, the vendors supply interface guidelines which should be followed for any application to be "native".
See Are there any standards to follow in determining where to place menu items? for more information.
If you are on (or develop for) a Mac, then definitely YES!
And this should be true for Windows also.
In general, yes. But there's the occassional program that does well despite being not formatted for all the OSes it runs on. For example, emacs runs pretty much contrary to every interface guideline on OS X or Windows (and probably even gnome/KDE) and it's not going away any time soon.
I strongly recommend making your application look native.
A common mistake that developers who are porting an application to a new platform seem to make is that the new application should look-and-feel like it does on the old platform.
No, the new application should look-and-feel like all the other application that the user is used to on the new platform.
Otherwise, you get abominations like iTunes on Windows. The same UI design may be exactly right on one platform and very wrong on the next.
You will find that your users may not be able to pin-point why they dislike your application, but they just feel it hard to use.
Yes, there are valid exceptions, but they are rare (and sure enough, they tend to be the major applications like Office and Firefox, rather than the little ones). If you are unsure enough to have to ask on StackOverflow, your application isn't one of them.