Graphical Form Design

[Johnnie100]

I am relatively new to VB and form design in general, having come from an assembler back ground where no participation in GUI development was available.

I was hoping for some advice, not on the layout of code, but on the layout, colours & design of the forms. To make them as user friendly and asthetically pleasing as possible - any books or recommended websites would be greatly appreciated (may I just stress this is not a HCI but a graphical design issue).

Thanks in advance for any contributions

Johnnie100

 

[RickSpr]

See if you can find a copy of The Windows Interface, An Application Design Guide (ISBN 1-55615-384-8) from Microsoft Press. It's a bit dated (copyright 1987, 1992) but is still an excellent, rigorous treatment of GUI design issues.

One quick tip is to always use "system colors" for anything but custom graphics on your forms. System colors are abstract; instead of specifying red, green, and blue components, they specify things like "the color of the title bar" or "the color of a command button". At runtime, the actual colors are assigned from the user's preferences chosen in the Display Properties dialog, Settings tab. In this way, your forms will blend into the Windows environment, rather than standing out with a color scheme of their own. Rick Sprague