Customer Reviews

Developer to Designer: GUI Design for the Busy Developer

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Resources on how to use each of the UI controls and dialog styles in which circumstance are scattered throughout the MSDN library and articles. This book does a great job of bringing all of that information together into one place and, as such, is a reasonable first reference manual on how to put together a UI application.

However, this book didn't cover what I expected to see: how do you design a good UI? Given a set of three activities to do, how do you map that into a flow across the application? How do you do simple usability studies using a friend or family? I was sorely disappointed, as those techniques are what turn a UI from a set of controls that a developer slapped together into an application that feels like it was designed to be used for a purpose.

Also, don't think that this goes into all of the details. Given the depth he went into on control use, I was expecting to see some of the Windows Logo guidelines in there, perhaps as an appendix - buttons will be such and such dialog units from the corner, etc. Instead, there are intro chapters on *forming* Avalon and HTML. This seemed out of place given that there was no intro chapter on using the Visual Studio .NET design surfaces and they read more like there was a page target for the book than that the content was part of an overall plan for the reader.

Mike Gunderloy has put together a nice book to follow up his Coder to Developer, this time covering the basics of UI design and concepts. A good book, but not perfect. What's good: he systematically describes in detail all the major components making up the modern Windows user interface. Don't do Windows? That's okay, a lot (if not all) of the components have their equivalents in other operating systems/UI shells. If you've never done UI design, either by choice or you've never had to, this is a good place to start. I've not found a book yet that covers the UI basics, without being wrapped up in a particular language or technology. The author's premise is a sound one; rare is the project that has the luxury of a dedicated UI specialist. Most business applications are done by developers that are typically not trained in User Experience or the like. So if you think that a good UI is easy and you just drag some of them white boxes on to the form, with a bunch of buttons too, this is a good book for you. I also appreciate his coverage of the web browser based application. There has been a lot of work in standard UI styles that got tossed out the window when the web based app hit. Mike does a good job dealing with that too. What's not so good: I thought that the chapter spent on Avalon, Microsoft's future UI was wasted, as it is inconsistent with the premise of the book. We'll need the new version of the book in a couple of years, once Avalon/Longhorn have shipped. I would have preferred the space used for more details on the current UI styles. My other issue is that this is a book for beginners. If you follow what Tog or Jef Raskin are doing in UI design, this isn't the book for you. If you feel challenged by Alan Cooper's ideas, then keep looking, this is a beginner's book and you are not going to find what you're looking for here. And this is not a criticism, merely an admission that this book is for a particular skill level, just like other development books. I'm glad to see Sybex and Mike Gunderloy giving the User Interface it's due and hopefully making developers realize that there is a little more to UI design.

Just finished reading the book and I must say that this book is lacking good technical content. It focused more on trivial things and explained them too in-depthly. Plus, it seems that windows based design was the focus and web based design was brought in as an afterthought. It doesn't nearly have as much content or good design recommendations. Also, don't even get me started on the introduction of "Avalon" into the book. This chapter was completely out of place in this book. The lackluster chapter described something thats a year or more off, not to mention stuff that is going to change. Not anywhere in this chapter did it explain good design patterns for Avalon, as currently there are none. This chapter seemed more of an "intro to avalon" chapter - which is why I thought it was out of place.

I think Lars and M. Hawley's reviews are right on. I was pretty disappointed with this book. Most of it seemed to be pretty much common sense. Don't get me wrong I did learn some from this book. The first few chapters had some decent content but as the chapters went on I was hoping it would focus more on design and technical aspects. If you're looking for the basics then this book is good but if you're an experienced (even moderately) developer then I think you will be disappointed.

The fact is, most developers are not great User Interface (UI) designers. I look at user interfaces designed by most developers and I cringe. Even my own user interfaces are, frankly, not that great, and I have been at this for a long time (most often doing server-side development - in part because of my lacking design skills). After reading this book, I think I have at least some hope of doing a better job, because it made me think about things that I do not often think about. The reality is that even the best developer will generally not be working on a team that has a separate user interface design team, and so anything that can get a developer at least thinking about issues involving user interfaces is a good thing.

Following up on his excellent "Coder to Developer" Mike Gunderloy takes us on the next step in the journey. Having given us a complete set of technical skills Mike now gives us common sense and practical design skills for Windows. With the full complement of skills in hand you will be able to complete the entire technical side of the application development cycle.

The design fundamentals presented in this book are pretty basic and common sense. Just having use the Microsoft Office suite on Windows will have taught you many of these things. But what you will find is that the book not only gives you the 'how' of interface design, but also the 'why'.

I've been on a number of projects where someone has spent the time to define what controls should be used in what context. When dialogs should be used. How menus should be organized. And so on. You should evaluate the book in this context as well.

An excellent companion to "Coder to Developer". I wonder what will come next. Developer to Architect perhaps?