Chapter 21 Designing the User Interface

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Chapter 21
Designing the User Interface

IF YOU'RE LIKE MANY programmers, you ask your spouse or a friend if this tie goes with that suit. You leave it up to someone else to select colors, patterns, and designs. In other words, you don't have much experience with visual design.

Fear not. In this chapter you'll find some guidelines for good Windows design. Talented designers at various software companies have spent lots of time developing these concepts in the past decade. You can see the results by comparing the uninviting flat gray appearance of early Windows applications with the sleek, sculpted, dimensional look that has become the standard in recent versions of Windows, especially XP.

Many studies have demonstrated that how a program looks influences how it's used, and also how it's rated. The most obvious example is grouping a set of related radio buttons into a single GroupBox. This cues the user that these buttons are mutually exclusive choices, making the user's life easier. There are many other examples. User-interface design is a surprisingly highly developed set of techniques and suggestions, some rather subtle. Surprising, given that it's only a decade old (nobody counts pre-Windows DOS UI theory as significant anymore—for the same reason that automakers no longer take into account the features of the horse-drawn carriage).

Making Applications Look Reliable

We'll explore a variety of techniques you can use to make your VB programs look better. At first we'll work with tools that VB provides—the BackgroundImage property of forms and of a few controls. Then we'll go beyond what VB provides, demonstrating how to do pretty much anything visual that you want to do. You've seen commercial software with slick lighting effects, fade transitions, embossed and shadowed text, sliding panels, opacity, and all the rest. In this chapter you'll see how to accomplish those tricks and other effects. But before going further, we've got to finish dealing with the fundamental question some of you are doubtless asking: Why bother?

A pretty form is more than merely a desirable luxury. If your work looks coordinated, polished, and professional on its surface, people will think it is equally solid on the inside. They will trust it more. Study after study has demonstrated that handsome men or beautiful women are far more likely to be believed than plain people. That's why grifters, lounge lizards, and con artists of all stripes are usually physically attractive. It's also why so many companies pay huge sums to improve their logo, and millions to get movie stars to recommend their products.

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