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From: transkawa on 16 Jun 2010 06:52

good day, please I am a newbie to User Interfaces. I really want to
learn the essentials or basics of user interface programming. can anyone
point me to basic references online. am a student who's crazy about
concentrating on user interface programming. really think i should have
a clean grasp before even agile.
help with references please
xnt

--
two things i learnt from life:
the hardest things are the simplest of all; they just take time
the simple things are not hard at all
So I just try to KISS it.
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 16 Jun 2010 07:30
transkawa <transkawa(a)yahoo.fr> writes:

> good day, please I am a newbie to User Interfaces. I really want to
> learn the essentials or basics of user interface programming. can anyone
> point me to basic references online. am a student who's crazy about
> concentrating on user interface programming. really think i should have
> a clean grasp before even agile.
> help with references please

Well, I'll assume for a while that you mean Graphical User Interface
(GUI).



My advice would be to read and study in depth two things:

- the User Interface Guidelines (of some good GUI toolkit),
- the whole class hierarchy (of some good GUI toolki).

I would advise to study OpenStep, in it's Cocoa phenotype, since Apple
Computer Inc. provides the most advanced GUI.

That means writing a couple of applications with medium-complexity
user interfaces, involving the widest range of GUI elements.

Once you've got the basis of desktop GUI, be sure to also read the
iPhone/iPod/iPad version of the guidelines and classes, which will
give you a taste of a slightly different kind of GUI.



Once you've studied in depth a good GUI toolkit, you will be able to
learn and understand other GUI toolkits quite easily. They're all
structured about the same, and have about the same concepts.



But now, you may need to learn User Interface in general, and this is
indeed a vastly broader subject, since this would involve:

- speach recognition, speach synthesis,

- gesture recognition (eg camera, or infrasound captors), body
language (robotics, or virtual robotics), including sign languages,

- face expression recognition, face expression synthesis (cameras,
robotics or virtual robotics),

- psychology of intellectual work,

- ergonomics in general,

- etc, etc, etc.



In particular, some principles of GUI, which are good in some generic
"desktop" situation, may be very bad in other specific "mission
critical" situations. For some applications, you may need to design
user interface specificities. (For example, in an application in the
pharmaceutical domain, it may be important that no part of a window be
hidden by another window, because life-or-death information is
presented and must be seen at all times).

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com
From: osmium on 16 Jun 2010 08:47
"transkawa" wrote:


> good day, please I am a newbie to User Interfaces. I really want to
> learn the essentials or basics of user interface programming. can anyone
> point me to basic references online. am a student who's crazy about
> concentrating on user interface programming. really think i should have
> a clean grasp before even agile.
> help with references please

The linked article would probably be interesting to you. A Hall of Shame on
how *not* to do it.

http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/clarity.htm


From: transkawa on 5 Jul 2010 08:47
In article <87rvf3F708U1(a)mid.individual.net>, r124c4u102(a)comcast.net
says...
>
> "transkawa" wrote:
>
>
> > good day, please I am a newbie to User Interfaces. I really want to
> > learn the essentials or basics of user interface programming. can anyone
> > point me to basic references online. am a student who's crazy about
> > concentrating on user interface programming. really think i should have
> > a clean grasp before even agile.
> > help with references please
>
> The linked article would probably be interesting to you. A Hall of Shame on
> how *not* to do it.
>
> http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/clarity.htm

read the article. will soon send email to page writer.
a home page on how to do it would really have been better.
do oblige me your knowledge.
TIA
xnt

--
two things i learnt from life:
the hardest things are the simplest of all; they just take time
the simple things are not hard at all
So I just try to KISS it.
From: osmium on 5 Jul 2010 13:42
"transkawa" wrote:

> In article <87rvf3F708U1(a)mid.individual.net>, r124c4u102(a)comcast.net
> says...
>>
>> "transkawa" wrote:
>>
>>
>> > good day, please I am a newbie to User Interfaces. I really want to
>> > learn the essentials or basics of user interface programming. can
>> > anyone
>> > point me to basic references online. am a student who's crazy about
>> > concentrating on user interface programming. really think i should have
>> > a clean grasp before even agile.
>> > help with references please
>>
>> The linked article would probably be interesting to you. A Hall of Shame
>> on
>> how *not* to do it.
>>
>> http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/clarity.htm
>
> read the article. will soon send email to page writer.
> a home page on how to do it would really have been better.
> do oblige me your knowledge.

I expected someone else to give you a response; I guess it didn't happen.
Years ago I head about a document from Apple that was a kind of bible for
this thing. I knew at the time I should have captured it, but I didn't. If
there is, indeed, such a thing I think that is what you want. Try these in
your search engine
apple gui guidelines
gui seminal computer
and see if you can find what you want. "seminal" casuse a lot of noise
reposnses which have to be filtered out.

Good luck.


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