Recommended Reading

• Bickford, Peter. Interface Design: The Art of Developing Easy-to-Use Software. Chestnut Hill, MA: Academic Press, 1997.

Chapter 7, "Preferences," is subtitled "Preferences, Persistence, and the Soft Machine." Although this subtitle might seem a bit strange, it's quite meaningful. Hardware (a hard machine) has mechanical switches and settings that maintain their state after the power is switched off (although, technically, few switches used in modern consumer electronics are still completely mechanical). Software (a soft machine) has a tendency to reset its state whenever it is restarted. The idea in this chapter is that software is improved if it models the behavior of hardware in this respect. This concept applies well to preferences because a program that persistently saves user settings requires fewer explicit user preferences.

• Cooper, Alan. About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1995.

Chapter 32, "Installation, Configuration and Personalization," presents some interesting ideas about configuration, especially relating to the problem of disturbing navigation by configuring a program in a way that removes fixed reference points in the user interface.

• Microsoft Corporation. The Designed for Microsoft Windows logo requirements, "Accessibility and User Interface."

Gives useful information for providing configurability for accessibility. You can find the logo requirements on the CD-ROM included with this book and in the MSDN library.