Customer Reviews

Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)

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Collins cuts right to the quick on this often misunderstood topic. Project manager thru programmer will profit from having this on their desk. It you remember COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/1, then this sbook is syour key to understanding the "new age" of object orientness. Incredibly concise, crystal clear discussions of all the important issues.

The author of this book has obviously spend a great deal of time in academia -- much to his detriment. The book reads like a college-level psychology textbook, complete with references to the myriad other people upon whom his work is drawn.

For example, the author is not content to just define a term and move on. Instead, he reviews the entire history of the term, what other people have thought about the term, and then summarizes all of the thoughts. Geez, there are even examples at the end of each chapter.

If my review is hard to read, I blame it on the fact that I have been reading this book for the past hour.

But, if you can get past the pedantic writing style, you will find a good deal of useful information. The concept of object-oriented user interfaces is often misinterpreted and/or mis-implemented. There is a detailed history of the object-oriented GUI, and good discussions on the human factors that lead to good GUI designs.

One note is that the book was published in 1995, so brace yourself for lots of examples from the leading GUI of that time: Windows 3.1! Windows NT is only mentioned as 'Cairo'. But as is true of many design models, the age of the book really has no relevance.

This excellent book is one of a mere few books that thoroughly and competently addresses object-oriented (OO) style of graphical user interface (GUI) design. Note that OO GUI *style* is entirely independent of whether the GUI is implemented with OO technology. A strength of this book is its comprehensibility by programmers, in addition to GUI designers.

Here are two other essential ones: Design Guide for Multiplatform Graphical User Interfaces (LP R13, Issue 3, by McFarland & Dayton, 1995, Piscataway, NJ: Bellcore), and Object-Oriented Interface Design: IBM Common User Access guidelines (by IBM, Carmel, IN: Que Corp.)

Here's a merely fair quality but essential one: The Windows guidelines for software design. (by Microsoft, 1995, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press).

This book explains the subtle nuances and fine art of designing truly object-oriented user interfaces in easily comprehensible terms. Dave Collins is an OO industry guru and his book is a significant contribution of pragmatic advice on the subject.