notes-books-designingInterfaces

Notes on Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell

after you've paged thru the book, to refresh your memory later, look thru the TOC. these folks scanned it in:

http://www.gbv.de/du/services/toc/bs/494996390

preface: another ((better)) name for pattern language 'forces' is 'tensions'

recc. book the "design of sites"

some elements that a design process should have:

closable panels can have be sublists open/closed by a +/- with a box around it

smart menu items e.g. "undo" -> "undo paragraph alignment"

8 preattentive variables for infographics:

hue, brightness, saturation, position/alignment, orientation, size, texture, shape

cascading lists: e.g. 4 columns, collections/family/typeface/size. to specify a selection, you must select one thing in each column. note that in some apps, some columns may be a 2d table of icons, rather than a 1d list of text

tree table: e.g. email threads

neat idea for financial apps: drop down calculator attached to a text field

example page that makes use of hairlines: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/ ( http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/ )

hairlines go with thick sans serif fonts