I need your suggestions how to organize and make a nice, graphical user interface.
Now I have something like this:
There is a tree view (it takes a big space...) as a menu with assigned frames to each item. All frames have control buttons (a tool bar) and something from this list: list views, string grids, progress bars, memos, rich edits, web browser, color pickers, list boxes, labels, edits etc.
I don't have enough experience to create a good, easy and graphical UI, and I do not have any ideas what to make.
The most hard thing for me is I need to create a nice SDI, but the present UI is similar to a MDI (frames with lots controls are instead of windows).
So I'm trying to copy an UI from other soft: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/150-best-windows-applications-of-year-2010-editors-pick/ + SCREEN SHOTS. But I cannot find something appropriate for me :(
Added:
I have an idea to use a glass effect (a "menu" instead of a tree view on the left), but it looks complicatedly: buttons on a glass and buttons below (a tool bar).
Another version:
Please, advice me what to do or give me a direction. Thanks!
Consider that most monitors are now 16/10 or 16/9, i.e. not in 4/3 aspect ratio any more.
Therefore, it's not a loss of space to put a tree on the left, or even the commands toolbar on the left side instead of the top of the window. Your first screenshot was not the worse, in this aspect. I just write a log viewer with this design: the log events has the full application height.
Office 2007/2010 ribbon for instance is nice looking, but takes too much vertical space IMHO on daily use. Some users (among me) are frustrated by this ribbon. For instance, I don't find it very usable in a notebook. Greatest user interfaces gives full space to content, not commands. Chrome is a good example of this. And mobile applications tend to maximize the available space use.
Just my 2 cents.
Personally speaking, about your first screen shot, the toolbar buttons are too big. They are much too strong a presence, even at second glance.
I would reduce their size. Or, when this program targets children or touching devices, the other controls and font sizes should be enlarged.
You are trying to create a tabbed application, So I'd suggest using some sort of tab-control.
Even the Delphi default one allows you to add pictures to the tabs.
Something like this:
A few considerations:
How often is the app used?
If the app will be used very daily by your users, try to maximize usable space, i.e. make the controls as small as need be.
If the app is used rarely by your users, make the controls big and bright, label every button so things are clear, and time figuring out where is what is minimized, this also means using familiar user interface elements.
Are you targeting elephants or mice?
If you audience is computer savvy (mice), you can get away with more experiments and bling; if you are dealing with perpetual beginners you will need to stick to basic stuff.
Remember, the user interface is a contract
Make sure the controls behave as advertised. If something looks like a button make it behave like a button. Don't disguise a menu to look like a listbox/treeview.
A menu does an action (it's a hidden button), a listbox selects one item that can be acted upon.
My opinion
I dislike your initial screenshot because it tries to force a tabsheet/pagecontrol into the format of a treeview, whilst naming the items menus. This makes for a clumsy interface.
I've never seen a menu be used to switch between views, and the treeview makes for a mighty small target to hid. On top of that it allows for multiple nesting.
The tree is a concept that every programmer understands, but very few people outside that group grok, IMHO, don't use a tree in your application! and avoid the treeview.
It's a poor control to work with because:
It allows nesting > 2 a NONO in my book;
It is too small to hit with a mouse, even worse with a touchpad;
What's up with the [>] sign in front, why would I want to collapse a tree with just 1 level of nesting and when I do and the [+] is visible in front of "main menu" where on earth have my submenu items gone?
I love your last version, but
It needs text labels for every button;
Make the vertical pagecontrol, look like some sort of tabbed sheet, this will make your intent instantly clear;
I would love to see a statusbar;
Glass may look cool, but having the junk from screens below shine through your app sure makes everything look busy, not a good thing if you're trying to focus on this particular app;
Make sure to put splitters between all panels, and make sure to visually highlight the splitter by setting beveled:= true and width/height:= 5 so you can actually hit that splitter
The info panel has its own caption, a huge waste of space. It's bad enough that every window has a title bar that does almost nothing, don't multiply non-interactive space.
Finally
Do as David says and buy a copy of about face, it's the best book on UI design I've seen by far. http://www.cooper.com/#about:books
First picture is the best version for standard desktops with mouse.
Third picture will be good for tablets with their touch screens. But it needs some improvements. Currently I can't see on which page I am now, even more: there are no signs that those buttons actually switch pages. I think, you need some sort of tabcontrol here.
Related
This is one of the rare cases where I don't care how or where, I just want to be able to do this. By that I mean it can be either on Google Sheets or Online Excel (because I don't have the MS Suite, I would prefer GSheets since every time I search for help on Excel, I get solutions for the Program version that uses features not in the Online one)
Basically, I want to re-create the web page of a forum... but on a spreadsheet. The reason for that is because I want to create a catalog of sorts that is related to that forum, without being restricted to the forum and to be more organized. Since I only care about the body, I just took a screenshot and essential cut a hole where the "body text" is (ideally I would like all the buttons to be images you can click and would take you the actual forum, but I'm not concerned now).
Right now, what I want to do is to preferable create a button that can hide/show text like a Spoiler button. And I don't mean the type that changes the text color to be the same as the background making it unreadable, I mean the ability to collapse/expand the text.
My current solution is using Google Sheets and I'm grouping rows and using the +/- button on the left side. That has worked pretty well so far but it has 2 glaring issues:
#1 The +/- button is all the way to the left side
#2 And that button is inaccessible to people that have "viewing only" rights to the sheet, making this kind of a pain to use for people.
For #1 I have created a "drawing" that's just a straight line going all the way to the button to the side.
And for #2, because I want to make this sheet as dumbproof as possible, I'll have to write that they'll have to duplicate the sheet in order to use it. Which is going to take me a couple of days until I make a dumbproof "guide" on how to do that.
Ultimately, currently the best solution would be to create "buttons" where each one can collapse/expand a specific grouping of rows. But even just to create buttons I have to learn scripts, which I don't know how to... I don't even know where you're supposed to write the scripts to begin with.
Currently I'm pretty satisfied with what I've made so I'm not too pressed if I don't find a better solution. No you can't look at it because it's pretty sensitive.
SpringBoot 2 Vaadin 12.0.3
I've spent some time watching video tutorials and studying online examples of Vaadin. Unfortunately, so much has changed that options that I was hoping to try are no longer there.
CssLayout is no longer there - replaced by Div which does not expose expand(Component).
component.setWidth("300") has no effect.
component.setWidth("300", UNIT.*) does not work because UNIT is not in class path.
component.setWidth("300px") works but it's far from elegant and setting explicit width on a component which displays text is far from ideal.
I have three pseudo horizontal menu items. On a large screen, they'd be truly horizontal. On smaller screen, I'd like them to go into vertical mode.
Combo Box should expand to the width of the longest label.
Text Box should expand to available real estate. (Available width - Combo Box width - Search Button width)
Search Button should expand to the width of the Icon and Label without any wrapping.
Is this possible to achieve using Vaadin 12 Layout/Component contract or do I have to spend time defining such control in CSS file?
Your question implies that there would have been a trivial way of achieving your use case with the built-in layouts in Vaadin 7 or Vaadin 8 without using CSS. What you're describing about automatically switching between horizontal and vertical modes depending on the screen size sounds like something that would require some degree of responsive layouting, which typically implies directly using CSS.
What you could have done in older versions is to have Java logic that either uses a VerticalLayout or a HorizontalLayout depending on the situation. Those two classes are still available for the same kind of use cases. The APIs have changed to better align with the underlying flexbox functionality, but the overall functionality is still the same.
You could also look in to FormLayout (part of the core framework) or the Board layout (separate add-on) which both provide some responsive functionality. They are, however, originally intended for slightly different use cases (forms and dashboards respectively), so it might be slightly challenging to make them fit your exact requirements.
Since Apple developer account is down, I can take the chance of later submiting and getting rejected since I will then run out of time.
Suppose I have 9-11 menu items in main window navigation. It is a bit too much, but that is what customer explicitly requested.
The Android version uses a listview and it works and looks good. It does so on iOS. However, I can see most iOS apps use a tabcontrol at bottom with extra tabs at (...) Is that a strict requirement in all cases? (I can't really say one of the menu items are more important that the other.)
No, using a tab bar controller is not a requirement, that's a design choice. Whether to use a tab bar controller or a list view depends on how you navigate around in your app, and what you want the user experience to be. If you want the user to be able to switch easily and quickly between different modes of the app, or different views of the same data, then probably a tab bar controller would be appropriate. On the other hand, if the choices you're making initially, are not made often, and you have a large number of choices (like you do), then a table view is probably more appropriate.
I was wondering what would be the best configuration of view controllers and views for an app that I’ve been planning out. Conceptually, the way I would like to lay out the app is with an initial loader/browser view, likely with document thumbnails. When a user chooses to open one, a new view comes up that forms the main document-editing mode. The user can also choose to bring up a third view that contains an alternative document-editing mode.
I suppose this is very much like the way the Pages for iPad works, with first a row of document thumbnails to choose from, then the main word processing view, and accessible from a popover a third page setup view. Document browser view, and two document editing views.
Now, I can think of, and have been playing around with a few different set-ups, but in each case I can see problems that I’ll be running into later. So really, I’m looking for advice on a configuration that you think would keep things as neat and manageable as possible.
I hope this is not too open a question, and I would very much appreciate any answer.
Thank you,
I will probibly get shot in the head for making a suggeston like this, but I'll make it anyway:
In learning iOS programming, I spent a lot of time studying (as most people do - and as is taught by every tutorial on the planet) on how to use Navigation Views, and toolbars, and all the standard type views that assist in different types of navigation.
On the latest app I have been working on - I spent a lot of time and frustration trying to figure out how to best characterize what I was doing - and moreso trying to fit it into what the iOS frameworks would use to implement this stuff. Then (of course) I got stuck trying get things to do what they weren't supposed to - like when a navigation view wouldn't let me use the "back" button to jump out of the navigation herirarchy I'd set-up, etc.
In short - when I stopped worrying about the specifics of what all these different types of views and controllers were - and how they interacted and how I was supposed to do it - and started worrying about how I wanted my application to work - and working from a basis of generic views, custom toolbars, etc - the whole think made a whole lot more sense.
In my case, I liked the look-and-feel of the Mapquest app - and they way it dealt with toolbars that your could open and close from the top and bottom of the screen - which had buttons - which could switch to other views etc. So I started using "generic" views to implement this functionality - and the whole entire thing clicked together.
So in-short:
1 . I'd decide how you want it to look and what you want it to do
Use a third-party app as your inspiration, if needed
Decide when/where/if some of the "standard" practices apply - and use them where/when they do.
Have fun!
-BKG
For accessibility purposes, I need to make the scrollbars for all scrollable controls (lists, list views) wider and the scrollbar arrows bigger.
How to get the scrollbars (handles) from a scrollable control (ex: TListView) ?
How to make the scrollbar and the arrows wider/bigger ?
10x for any hints and code...
Accessibility is something that does not concern a single application, but the whole system. That's why there is no API defined to adjust things like border widths, scrollbar size and similar properties of the native controls only for your program. You can however adjust these settings globally in Windows, either by using the Accessibility Wizard, or by adjusting fonts, colours, border sizes and scrollbar sizes in the Display Properties applet.
For more information you should check out the Microsoft Accessibility page and follow the various links.
Edit: Changing the global settings (as the accepted answer suggests) for the benefit of your own program is rude in the extreme. Please keep in mind that this interferes with all other running programs. It is maybe excusable for a system with a touch screen, where controls need to be large to be usable at all - but on such a system the control sizes would probably already be set correctly.
I'm not sure that you can - You have to change it (and restore back) for whole Windows.
http://www.greatis.com/delphicb/tips/lib/system-captionfont.html
Setting and reading property TNonClientMetrics.iScrollWidth
Edit: I know that this solution is rude, but in common cases is the best that you CAN do. If you have specialized TabletPC application then you usually use only that application at one time, not others. But - almost all Windows applications are not designed to work with so big scroolbars. So when you need to use OS dialogs and other applications then you have to switch it back.
There is no better solution than "while is my touchscreen application running set Window scroolbars big, then return it back". We have exactly this application in real world so I know what I'm talking about.
Of course you can write your own grid control (if you have so much time) or use some thirdparty controls (if you have money and time), but that was not question.