“Make your application icon the star!”
Here are 10 guidlines from Microsoft on how programmers are to provide the user with the quintisential Vista experiance. As opposed to the quintisential XP experience of continuous bug fixes, the quintisential Win98 and 95 experience of the BSOD, etc.
Rule 9: Use the Windows Vista tone in all UI text
Use the Windows Vista “tone” to inspire confidence by communicating to users on a personal level by being accurate, encouraging, insightful, objective, and user focused. Don’t use a distracting, condescending (for example, “Just do this…”), or arrogant tone.
And from rule 12:
Perception is reality, and if your customers don’t experience quality in your product throughout, they may conclude there is lack of quality everywhere.
Words to live by.
Well, at risk of being mocked I’ll say that I agree with Microsoft in all of those twelve rules. In fact I think all programs should follow those rules, it’s what I and other call ‘Desktop Consistency’
Some programers are still making their aps look like win 95. Good luck.
This is being done by Apple for decades. It’s no wonder OSX apps (and even System 7 and even older (jurassic?) system 6) look orders of magnitude slicker than Windows apps.
#2
And they’re probably as reliable as Windows 95 as well… 😉
In other words: How to copy OSX.
Windows Vista sucks and is the worst product Microsoft has ever shipped.
I’m certain some of the Dvorak readers can find an explanation about why Vista being crappy is somehow Bill Clinton’s fault.
Having seen WIndows standards before, there’s little new in these guidelines. They can be summarized as “don’t program stupidly.”
if a programmer uses standard windowing objects and ActiveX controls compatible with standard Windows objects, the current application will look just fine in Win98 (and maybe 95), in Win 2000 and XP, and in Vista. WinME was of course broken from the beginning…and never got fixed.
Incidentally, if I buy a PC that has Vista installed, I plan to simplify the UI as much as possible by removing most of the bells and whistles just like I did with my XP laptop (it looks like Win2K, not the clown nose interface), and the fluff (fading etc). Such crap takes up too much compute time, and makes most PCs run slowly.
If there is an option to change the current, ugly Mac UI to look more like the original Mac UI (which was clean and simple), that will probably speed up that interface too.
#6. – You said it first : “….Vista sucks…” correlation towards Bill goes without adding more… lol.
fwiw..me dem..Bush bad…Bill did great but, someone had to pay for hanging the tricky Dick and what better way to get one dick into trouble after getting the first one dicked…not sure I can follow this myself but, I’ll get a cheerleader to explain it better and get back to all here…
And Number 13:
Take a tip from us at Microsoft- if it looks pretty, it doesn’t really matter if it works good…
I tried Vista RC1. 12GB on HD and 500MB of RAM sucked in Aero. Why?!?!
11. Prompt the user for authentication all of the time, sometimes for no real reason.
I agree that Vista is only worth a damn after the user strips it down, but from a testing perspective that raises a question: Should test images have security fully enabled, or somewhat enabled? How will network admins deploy this product to end users?
Am I the only one who thinks the vista interface is ugly as ass, cluttered, annoyingly insulting, and designed for complete idiots who have never used a computer before?
It may be ‘easy to learn’ but it sure doesn’t seem easy to use. I feel like I am constantly fighting the os (like favorite places in explorer).
I have to admit, I recently installed Vista RC1 on my notebook computer and I’m not impressed at all so far. Still most functions are similar… looks better, however more smoke and mirrors.
I may finally switch to a Mac.
Windows Help was probably written by someone developing rule twelve. IMO, the only Help files goofier than Windows is Dreamweaver’s.
🙂 Hah! 🙂
Click on Rule 2
Click on “balloons”
Result:
Balloons
This content hasn’t been written yet, but here is some information to help you in the meantime.
Talk about an unfinished product with unfinished guidelines! 😉
Fabrizio Marana