What constitutes a professional application?
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S Douglas wrote:
I tend to use what evers part of VS.
I was wondering if the icons in VS, SQL Server Enterprise Manager, etc., are actually copyrighted? Can MS sue you for using their icons? I sort of expect so. :~ Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson
In Visual Studio 2005 they are packaging a separate .zip file with a lot(possibly all) of the icons used within Visual Studio.
- Nick Parker Microsoft MVP - Visual C#
My Blog | My Articles -
led mike wrote:
What if you know nothing about the business domain the application is for?
Then why am I using the application? If I don't know anything about what it's supposed to be for, then I probably shouldn't be using it.
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I think again you have to take into account who your audience is. It should be clear to that audience how functionality is grouped and how to perform common tasks. Consistent use of on screen cues (tool tips, icons, logical grouping of menus/toolbars, well named menu items, etc) should allow the target user to get around the application with a minimum amount of frustration. BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wrightbrianwelsch wrote:
I think again you have to take into account who your audience is.
I agree. Now what if your audience is diverse? I mean for the business domain. There are both long time heavily experienced employees, and brand new employees, and of course everything in between.
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Let's see if I can narrow this down a bit. I mean a WinForm app, not a web app. I'm not talking about documentation and help files and all that. What I mean more is, are things like MRU, customizable toolbars (or even toolbars themselves), shortcut remapping (if appropriate), etc. required? When you see an app for the first time, what makes you say "wow, some good work went into this" (only to be disappointed later, of course). Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson
Shiny buttons? :) Seriously, many of the features you listed are more signs of an "aged" application where more details are added over the years. Profession to me means simply and application that fills the bill both in "features" (which apply to its intended target) and usability (nice GUI, intuitive) and does not appear hacked together. Huge holes such as a "hit F1 for help" and then when they do no help is available, things of that nature would not be considered professional. Rocky <>< Latest Post: Visual Studio 2005 Standard, whats missing? Blog: www.RockyMoore.com/TheCoder/[^]
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J. Dunlap wrote:
Intuitive means that the average user can get around and do what he needs easily
What if the user does not know what he needs to do?
I guess, he must then go and read the manual for more help. Think about it, how easy and obvious do you make any tasks ? Do you add button after button on the toolbar so that every task is covered?. From my experience, making it "to easy" for the user just cluters the toolbars etc. Face it, Take MS Excel as an example. Different people use it for different tasks. Now do I add a button for each and every task that can be performed. That includes a button for each possible formulae, or do I only add menu options for the "key" functions, like "sum". You guys know what, searching for a specific button, I actually came accross some "hidden" features in Excel, that I never would have known about. So there is advantage in sometimes "hiding" information. How deep you hide it, that is the question at hand. The detail should be described in a help file. But I guess, the way this thread is going, we will soon see the question "What if the user does not know how to use help screens"..... cheers, happy professional coding....
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I guess, he must then go and read the manual for more help. Think about it, how easy and obvious do you make any tasks ? Do you add button after button on the toolbar so that every task is covered?. From my experience, making it "to easy" for the user just cluters the toolbars etc. Face it, Take MS Excel as an example. Different people use it for different tasks. Now do I add a button for each and every task that can be performed. That includes a button for each possible formulae, or do I only add menu options for the "key" functions, like "sum". You guys know what, searching for a specific button, I actually came accross some "hidden" features in Excel, that I never would have known about. So there is advantage in sometimes "hiding" information. How deep you hide it, that is the question at hand. The detail should be described in a help file. But I guess, the way this thread is going, we will soon see the question "What if the user does not know how to use help screens"..... cheers, happy professional coding....
Flexyware wrote:
we will soon see the question "What if the user does not know how to use help screens".....
That is not where I am going with it, rather here: So the user must have business domain knowledge to "intuit" right? Therefore "intuitive" includes specific relevant business domain criteria. The definition of intuitive can not always be limited to industry standard User Interface guidelines.
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brianwelsch wrote:
I think again you have to take into account who your audience is.
I agree. Now what if your audience is diverse? I mean for the business domain. There are both long time heavily experienced employees, and brand new employees, and of course everything in between.
You may have a diverse audience, as you pointed out, and for those people who are truly clueless, I think the dancing paperclip isn't such a bad way to go. It can be easily turned off by the annoyed masses who don't need it, but also it provides some guidance, without cluttering the UI, for the poor untrained folks who've never typed up a letter before. Instead, you also offer "How do I perform task X?" type Help, for people who don't even know what terms to search for. While this tends to lean away from being intuitive for everyone, I think it's acceptable to be "intuitive" for the majority users and provide a crutch for those getting up to speed. I don't think it's good design to simplify the UI to accomodate the lowest common denominator, just to keep people from accessing help. BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright -
You may have a diverse audience, as you pointed out, and for those people who are truly clueless, I think the dancing paperclip isn't such a bad way to go. It can be easily turned off by the annoyed masses who don't need it, but also it provides some guidance, without cluttering the UI, for the poor untrained folks who've never typed up a letter before. Instead, you also offer "How do I perform task X?" type Help, for people who don't even know what terms to search for. While this tends to lean away from being intuitive for everyone, I think it's acceptable to be "intuitive" for the majority users and provide a crutch for those getting up to speed. I don't think it's good design to simplify the UI to accomodate the lowest common denominator, just to keep people from accessing help. BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright -
brianwelsch wrote:
I don't think it's good design to simplify the UI to accomodate the lowest common denominator, just to keep people from accessing help.
could you please buy out my company and take over the software development division? :)
:-O BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright -
brianwelsch wrote:
I think again you have to take into account who your audience is.
I agree. Now what if your audience is diverse? I mean for the business domain. There are both long time heavily experienced employees, and brand new employees, and of course everything in between.
Metacreations tried (IIRC with Kai's Power Goo, for example) to introduce to concept of the interface growing as the user progressed and became more knowledgable... actually hiding features at the onset and revealing them gradually as you progress. I, for one, HATED that aspect of the program! I suppose the idea looked good on the drawing board but didn't really pan out very well... it made using the app very frustrating from the beginning for me.
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First off: the initial look and feel of the application, both with the splash screen and the UI. If I click the icon and a pleasant, functional splash screen comes up that informs me of what is happening, great. Next the look and feel of the UI -- no garrish colors and rediculous icons. No interface that is built with the default Control.Gray everywhere. A menu that conforms to the CUI specs: File first, Window second last, Help last, View for options. Easy navigation and flow through the application that is intuitive and does not make me click a million windows to get a single task done. An application that exits without asking me "Do you really want to exit?" unless I did not save my work. An application that comes with a setup file that sets up correctly, does not litter my desktop, and uninstalls without me needing to delete all of your directories and registry settings. An application that works the first time without the need to download a patch after setup. Finally, if I do need help, a help file is there. Better if there is contextual help as well, but I'd settle for a help file that lets me find the answer quickly via the Help..info window. I used one application that had a key feature in it and that feature was completely left out of the help manual.....even though other elements of the help file point you to using this feature!!!
How about saving custom settings/preferences without having to do it manually? It always drives me crazy when I install and customize an app, then on the next run my customizations are gone because I forgot to save them and the app didn't save them for me automatically or even bother to warn me before closing that my settings had changed... I actually prefer apps that give you the option to save settings on exit, or not, as you prefer.
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Let's see if I can narrow this down a bit. I mean a WinForm app, not a web app. I'm not talking about documentation and help files and all that. What I mean more is, are things like MRU, customizable toolbars (or even toolbars themselves), shortcut remapping (if appropriate), etc. required? When you see an app for the first time, what makes you say "wow, some good work went into this" (only to be disappointed later, of course). Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson
I'd say MRU, toolbar, and keyboard shortcuts to toolbar/menu functions. This would be one form. Another form is the customized UI which has become more popular in professional apps. It's rather like bringing the web to the desktop. The main screen UI is kind of laid out like a web page. There's a selection menu that offers different sub-screens. The functionality is like a tabbed interface in a traditional Windows app., but the look is all custom with graphical highlights for borders and menu headings. For reference I'd look at the UI for Norton AntiVirus 2005 or later. Windows apps. are going to look more like this down the road, since WPF will enable developers to create these kinds of interfaces more easily. Mark Miller Software Developer
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Hmm. Interesting question. I sort of went through this yesterday. I've been looking for software to create product "box-shots" so I downloaded and tried about eight different pieces of shareware before I found one that I consider professional. In retrospect these are the qualities that I was looking for: 1) The user interface was clean and modern (aka XP-like). 2) All of the controls I tried had the expected functionality (I define 'excpected' as what I would expect from the other shrink-wrap software I use on a daily basis). 3) Visually appealing - good, consistent colour scheme, consisten icons. 4) No half-baked features. It was clear that there was a feature set planned for the software and those features were fully implemented. 5) The text used throughout the software was clear and concise. 5) The supporting web site was equally professional. Basically the software I finally bought was leaps and bounds ahead of all the others. Oh, in case you're interested, it was True Box Shot[^] Cheers, Drew.
Drew Stainton wrote:
Basically the software I finally bought was leaps and bounds ahead of all the others. Oh, in case you're interested, it was True Box Shot[^]
...but then the professional image was ruined for me when I got to the bit about "waist"ing time... X|
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Let's see if I can narrow this down a bit. I mean a WinForm app, not a web app. I'm not talking about documentation and help files and all that. What I mean more is, are things like MRU, customizable toolbars (or even toolbars themselves), shortcut remapping (if appropriate), etc. required? When you see an app for the first time, what makes you say "wow, some good work went into this" (only to be disappointed later, of course). Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson
As far as I know, there is no way to do a universal professional application. On applications with a big users domain i think it's impossible, the reason: Too many users. Each user tends to use certain functions more than others. Some users (like me) prefers shortcut to the commands, other prefers to access those commands from a menu and some other from a toolbar. Some users like tutorials (which is a should for every medium / high complexity app) some users hate tutorials. Some users love the "daily tips", some others think that those tips are a waste of bytes. It depends on the user target. An universal app can have lots of thing for the new user (tutorials, manuals, tips, customizable toolbars,...) but those thing should not interfere with the use on an advanced user, and adv must be able to deactivate those features. I'm on a Fuzzy State: Between 0 an 1
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Drew Stainton wrote:
Basically the software I finally bought was leaps and bounds ahead of all the others. Oh, in case you're interested, it was True Box Shot[^]
...but then the professional image was ruined for me when I got to the bit about "waist"ing time... X|
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You may have a diverse audience, as you pointed out, and for those people who are truly clueless, I think the dancing paperclip isn't such a bad way to go. It can be easily turned off by the annoyed masses who don't need it, but also it provides some guidance, without cluttering the UI, for the poor untrained folks who've never typed up a letter before. Instead, you also offer "How do I perform task X?" type Help, for people who don't even know what terms to search for. While this tends to lean away from being intuitive for everyone, I think it's acceptable to be "intuitive" for the majority users and provide a crutch for those getting up to speed. I don't think it's good design to simplify the UI to accomodate the lowest common denominator, just to keep people from accessing help. BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven WrightI think your right on about the help functions, and not making the "UI to accomodate the lowest common denominator" But the Paperclip! X| I agree he can be helpful, unfortunately he's extremely annoying.