Windows Conventions

Team Fly

Page 626

USING FOCUS GROUPS TO PRODUCE VISUAL GUIDELINES

Microsoft and others have conducted many focus groups, testing tens of thousands of people, and have found that certain design elements result in the most efficient form organization and most visually appealing ''looks." One finding that might surprise you: Choose icons with relatively subtle coloring when designing your application. Too many bright tiny icons are annoying and clutter the screen.

If you've never studied, or even thought about, pictorial design, here's your chance. VB, and Windows, offer rich graphics possibilities. Computing is becoming increasingly, even relentlessly, visual. (This trend will not stop until computer programs are photo-realistic, until a telephone icon looks like a 3D hologram of a telephone, and until multimedia is so common that the distinction between computers and television disappears. So prepare yourself. Programming now requires that at least someone involved has a visual sense.)

Design is not just a matter of making things look better—it's also a matter of user-comfort, efficiency, and, ultimately, a quality that distinguishes professional from amateur programming. How things look and feel is a big part of how easily they are used. Ergonomics matters. And ergonomics is, in part, visual.

Visual design and decoration have not traditionally been part of a programmer's job description. But computing is increasingly graphical, and will never revert to the text-based interface typified by the beloved but infamous black DOS screen with its white words. The computer console is as dead as the floor-standing radio.

These days you must communicate with the user via graphics—even sometimes via video—as well as with text. Fortunately there are guidelines and conventions you can learn. Explaining these conventions, and providing hints about design, is the purpose of this chapter.

In the best-designed applications, some visual conventions include placement of the Close or Exit buttons in the lower right, a gray (or at least not white) background, related controls grouped into zones separated by frames, and so on. If one of your Visual Basic forms has its BackColor set to white, is unzoned, and locates the Exit Button on the left, your application will slow users down. It will confuse them because it's both homely and, in a bad sense, unique. Users are simply not familiar with odd design elements. There are conventions to Windows (form) design. Users might not know why, but they will be uncomfortable using your program.

Windows Conventions

There are several graphics conventions to which virtually all Windows programs now submit. Your programs should too. The most important of those are explained in the following sections.

The Metallic Look

First, many Windows programs still aspire to look "metallic," though various "themes" are less severe and involve earth tones and other color schemes. You can achieve the metallic look by building highlights and shadows into controls, such as buttons, and by using a metallic gradients for backgrounds to your forms and other elements. (For an explanation demonstrating how to create gradients, see the section titled "Metallic Shading" later in this chapter.)

Team Fly