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 consumer electronics are still 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 8, "Load of the Files," includes an interesting discussion of the problems with the file system_based programming model used by most software. Chapter 11, "Orchestration and Flow," describes how programmers confuse possibility with probability and, as a result, ask the user questions (usually through unnecessary dialog boxes) even when it's almost a given what the answer will be. Chapter 14, "The Secret Weapon of Interface Design," covers how to eliminate unnecessary user input by remembering previous input.

• Microsoft Corporation. The Designed for Microsoft Windows logo requirements, "Save Data to the Best Locations."

Provides requirements and recommendations for saving data. You can find the logo requirements on the CD-ROM included with this book and in the MSDN library.

• Microsoft Corporation. Designing for the User Experience. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1999.

See the information on secondary windows for useful guidelines on selecting default command buttons for dialog boxes.