Customer Reviews

New Windows Interface (Microsoft Corporation)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is good but even better is the new 1999 book under the title: Windows User Experience - official guidlines for user interface developers and designers.

The new book is updated and has content on Windows 2000! Highly recomended for anyone who wants to build quality applications. Similar content to this book but updated with new info.

This book came out just before Windows 95 became available in 1995. It has been the definitive reference book for UI guidelines for 32bit Windows applications, until now. With Windows 2000 recently released, a new book (which is really an update of this book) entitled "Microsoft Windows User Experience" has been published.

To echo the other reviews, don't be put off because this book is now 11 years old. Almost all of the behavior defined in this text still applies to Windows XP. If you are somehow involved in UI design for desktop software, you need this book.

This book should be required reading for everyone. Why? Because it is well worded. I've seen people who have been in the software business for years that couldn't put the workings of a user interface into words if their life depended on it. If people articulated as clearly in words as this book does, my work life would be so much simpler.

The book was very good - back in 1995. Now, in 2002, it is obsolete and misleading. I am surprised to see it offered by Amazon. It is like selling yesteryear's newspaper.

Although this reference has been replaced by a new version, this is a great reference for all those "what's the standard" question that arise in development shops. Gives software engineers and quality assurance a yard stick to avoid really "bad" design. If you're still testing or designing for Win 95 - Win NT, this is the book! The new version covers the Win 2000 and ME interfaces but this definitely one to keep on the bookshelf at all times.

This is a good book to add to your library if you're looking for MS windows GUI standards. It does a fine job of documenting the standards that are for the most part (not always) implemented by Microsoft. Perhaps, it should be required reading for Microsoft GUI developers, since they could derive some benefit from it as well. This book needs to be brought up to date to include WIN2K embelishments (but, it's probably still 80-90% applicable).

If you're designing a UI or writing code for one, you need this book as a reference. Sure, you might know all this stuff, but when you're specifying the title bar for that new application window, it's good to be able to check whether the text is supposed to be "application - document" or "document - application". It has other useful things, like guidelines for capitalization, guidelines for writing help, etc.

Every development organization should have one so that users don't have to relearn the basics of interacting with software over and over. Whether or not you like Windows, you'll do your users a service if you design the basics according to the guidelines. Then you can be creative with the rest.

Hey! Is it an used book. Can't believe it. It's in excellent condition.

Definitely exceeded my expectations.

Thanks,
N. Murali Mohan

This books solves a lot of arguments. When some analyst/designer/developer says "I think 'OK' buttons should be positioned on the top-left corner of each screen blah blah blah" I just point to this book and tell them to look it up in the guidelines. End of discussion. Following the guidelines keeps everyone's look-and-feel consistent, and prevents yet another analyst from writing their own "styleguide" for each project.