You had me at "Hello World!"

Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines: Designing controls, text style and tone, placement and many more

·         What is the correct style and tone for user UI?

·         How to make a good looking UI for Vista

·         What are the top UI mistakes and how to avoid them?

·         Where are the Vista guidelines and design principles for controls, windows, aesthetics and more?

This is a very small extract from the Vista guidelines page on MSDN:

“For a general design model, don't assume that users carefully read the text in a left-to-right, top-to-bottom order. Rather, assume that users start by quickly scanning the whole window, then read UI text in roughly the following order:

1.        Interactive controls in the center

2.        The commit buttons

3.        Interactive controls found elsewhere

4.        Main instruction

5.        Supplemental explanations

6.        Window title

7.        Other static text in main body

8.        Footnotes “

See the Vista UI Guidelines here: User Interface Text

See the Vista Style and Tone Guidelines here: Style and Tone

Check out the Top Guidelines Violations

Vista User Experience Guidelines

Published Monday, April 28, 2008 1:06 PM by nikola