Thanks for taking a peek all!

I wish that I could come up with a better way to surround groups of things other than putting a plain ol' box around 'em. Some other UIs have really superb graphics that I'm jealous as [censored] about.

Screen positioning is also a complaint. The forms that you'll see are all sized at about 8-10" wide, but I can't seem to get it to center on the screen. Not a really important factor though since that might require users to "bounce" their focus as the content position changes dynamically.

I totally understand your frustration, however, these things can sometimes be overcome if you are savvy with some of the other creative software solutions that are out there such as Photoshop, Illustrator, etc...

You can use these programs to create design elements for your user interface and just use them as images that you put on your form.

Of course this always brings in the age old question about how much time do you want to spend on functionality compared to aesthetics.

sreinmann,

Looks pretty good to me. A couple of things to bear in mind -

Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder

And be aware of the Chocolate Theory (which states) - a little bit is nice. Too much is sickening.


Happy New Year.

AvgJoe


"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." Groucho Marx

Scot,

Personally I like what I see. It may not be a cool and jazzy as some interfaces here, but it's clean and professional.

As for grouping - the plain ol' box does the trick, but I think what you've done with the highly contrasting fonts and indentation does the trick too. Seems like things would be grouped just fine w/o the boxes. The only one I might have a problem with is _Title since you effectively have two columns of buttons. Yet, I *think* the amount of horizontal separation between the two columns is sufficient.

Oh, and I understand the screen positioning thing. Do you create centered forms? If you do, then users have to adjust their focus at each page. Do you create forms with fixed left/top dimensions so the first element is in the same position on each screen - meaning that you can have a lot of empty space on the bottom and/or right side of the screen. Personally, I prefer the former because it's easier to use and I think that's more important.

Regardless, I still like the format of your application.

Have you looked at the special effects for boxes and lines? You can achieve some quite interesting 'looks' with just these simple properties.

HTH

Z

On your form "Facilty Expenses" in the box "Facility Expenses", I would change the justification from left justified to right justification on the lables:

Other wise looks good.
I like the instructions on the bottom of the form
valuable but not intrusive.

Michael

Thanks for the input and suggestions guys! Perspective is always helpful in design.

Larry, I've always developed my forms with fixed Left/Top positioning. I hadn't discovered a "centered" positioning property. I'll have to dig a bit and do some tests!

Scot,

Sorry, may not have described that correctly. Centering would really apply to pop-up and/or modal forms where the form is in a restored (not maximized) state. Then you can resize the form so the blank area on the right matches the blank area on the left (didn't want to use the word margin). You can do the same for the bottom to top. Keeps the form elements visually centered on the form and the form centered in the window. Problem is that with forms of different sizes, each time you move to a new form, the user has to bounce their focus to wherever the first form element's located on the new form.

I do remember one app I created many years ago where I did a compromise. I established a default form size. Since about 90% of the forms were set at this same size, I was able to create standardized graphics, labels, etc and put the first form element at the same location on the form. Then I had each form pop up centered, so as the users transited from form to form, the elements lined up just right. The only exceptions were modal pop-ups used for user-input/selection and seemed to flow without causing visual orientation problems. Been awhile since I worked with that app and forgot about it 'til just now.

Yeah, its also difficult since my users all set their screen sizes to different settings, and some folks remotely access the terminals with shared access to the DB.

Nice write up, I'll keep your comments in mind for my application

A while back, I created this little tool for creating and saving color combinatins: Color Combination Viewer

It doesn't interface with your forms, but lets you derive a set of color combos to try out for your interface(s).

Also, I've not yet tested it in A2K7, wherein I understand there are some color coding issues . . .

may you find it useful . . .