GUI Design
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How are GUIs designed these days? I've dabbled in programming for over a decade with lots of GUI work, but nothing ever serious and under enough direction to learn the -right- way to do it. I've always hand-placed widgets or used the dialog editors and what not. This strikes me as a somewhat archaic way to do things. So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Cheers, Jake
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How are GUIs designed these days? I've dabbled in programming for over a decade with lots of GUI work, but nothing ever serious and under enough direction to learn the -right- way to do it. I've always hand-placed widgets or used the dialog editors and what not. This strikes me as a somewhat archaic way to do things. So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Cheers, Jake
Jake my current application uses a 3rd party library and I feel most developers would probably move towards using a 3rd party library because the work is done. The good thing is that most 3rd party libraries say for MFC include full source code so you can see how they did it. However, with 3rd party libraries there is a lot of calls to .Create and typing in code. There are some with layout managers but some really advanced owner drawn controls are placed using hand entired coordinates. Code4Food ---- "There is no try; only do or do not" -Yoda
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How are GUIs designed these days? I've dabbled in programming for over a decade with lots of GUI work, but nothing ever serious and under enough direction to learn the -right- way to do it. I've always hand-placed widgets or used the dialog editors and what not. This strikes me as a somewhat archaic way to do things. So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Cheers, Jake
Janovetz wrote: So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Well... This is a bit difficult to answer because you ask about "design" but the example of the type of thing you're looking for in the answer is what I would class as development. If you are really interested in "design" then the book Don't Make Me Think[^] by Steve Krug is a good starting point. He talks about Web Pages, but a lot of the ideas can be applied to Forms based GUI design too. --Colin Mackay--
"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but perseverance." (H. Jackson Brown) Enumerators in .NET: See how to customise foreach loops with C#
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Janovetz wrote: So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Well... This is a bit difficult to answer because you ask about "design" but the example of the type of thing you're looking for in the answer is what I would class as development. If you are really interested in "design" then the book Don't Make Me Think[^] by Steve Krug is a good starting point. He talks about Web Pages, but a lot of the ideas can be applied to Forms based GUI design too. --Colin Mackay--
"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but perseverance." (H. Jackson Brown) Enumerators in .NET: See how to customise foreach loops with C#
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: If you are really interested in "design" then the book Don't Make Me Think[^] by Steve Krug is a good starting point. He talks about Web Pages, but a lot of the ideas can be applied to Forms based GUI design too. I second this recommendation. It's the smallest, easiest to read book on usability I've ever encountered. - Mike
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Janovetz wrote: So can someone tell me how GUIs are designed? I'm talking about relatively simple programs (not advanced skin-based things) that may use owner-drawn elements (and so can't reliably be done with dialog editors). What do you use to do GUI design? Well... This is a bit difficult to answer because you ask about "design" but the example of the type of thing you're looking for in the answer is what I would class as development. If you are really interested in "design" then the book Don't Make Me Think[^] by Steve Krug is a good starting point. He talks about Web Pages, but a lot of the ideas can be applied to Forms based GUI design too. --Colin Mackay--
"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but perseverance." (H. Jackson Brown) Enumerators in .NET: See how to customise foreach loops with C#