At this point, to keep it short, I just refer to this article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook...000000057.html and say I made quite a valid point. I agree more or less 100% with the article.
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At this point, to keep it short, I just refer to this article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook...000000057.html and say I made quite a valid point. I agree more or less 100% with the article.
Well my application allows end users to specify themes...I happen to choose that theme cause I like that background. No one is stopping you from using a pink background :bigyello: .Quote:
Originally posted by AvisSoft
Hello!
So many different views and so many types of designs people use worldwide. But jhermiz (no offense) i did'nt liked your design. It does not looks professional in any way (again please no offense). Its just my view...i mean to say why you are using a dark grey background ?
For example your Menu screen shot has little colour bugs (though they can be fixed) but it will always be a problem from pc to pc. Also in the colour properties thingy you're not using the standard colour picker available using common dialog controls people use those standard dialogs only and they like to use only those as they are familiar with those. If you show them something else they get confused (for eg. what if a newbie who just did a basic window course is trying to use your program ? he will have a hard time figuring out your dialog).
Also szlamany i want a technology in my software that should be called "Keep it simple for even Newbie". Because software is made for us and we're not made for the software. I hope you understand what i am trying to say here. And i must agree that no one uses help files in the first place.
This thread is getting longer for good. I guess. The more people contribute the more standards we see what is being used now a days.
Thanks!
What's not professional about it? You mentioned colors...I responded with I allow for themes in my application. How many other developers actually have taken the time to define a theme inside of their application OUTSIDE of windows ?
If I hear valid points like Marty's I'm willing to make the changes...but if I get something that I can easily backup I usually do :D . I don't mean to be arrogant or cocky...but I've seen too much horrible VB work out there. Then I get people responding but not backing it up..or saying "its not professional" or "i allow my users to resize" all of which I do.
So if you make a suggestion back it up with valid proof. By the way that article is quite old...and I think my design properly follows everything big joel has to offer if not more.
If you read the article you'd see it discussed about programmers who feared UI with no design. Art in other words, I'd say my color scheme, my ability to apply themes, button images..would be considered art. If I compare my forms with Merris (no argument here) I'd say his form has absolutely no creativity or art whatsoever.
:afrog:
Hello!
I must say you're getting angry with our sugggestions on your design. As i mentioned earlier (no offense). When we're talking proffessional then we mean that the
- deisgn should be universal
- should be decent looking (means everyone should say its a good designed app. in working and looks).
- should have no bugs atleast in the design etc.
- should be user friendly.
- it should be quick in loading and should use as less resources as possible.
I hope you understand what i am trying to say here. If you keep on adding stuff like useless flash animations and other stuff you're just making your app. bulky. And when designing a business app. you never need the themes thing. A business app. should be straight to the point with the business customization it requires and not the looks etc.
For eg. Business App. Requires:
- users to add new fields or change what he wants in the reports or designing his own reports etc.
For eg. what Business App. does not Requires:
- ability to change themes etc.
According to me there should be no themes at all.
Thanks!
Nah never angry you're taking it the wrong way.Quote:
Originally posted by AvisSoft
Hello!
I must say you're getting angry with our sugggestions on your design. As i mentioned earlier (no offense). When we're talking proffessional then we mean that the
- deisgn should be universal
- should be decent looking (means everyone should say its a good designed app. in working and looks).
- should have no bugs atleast in the design etc.
- should be user friendly.
- it should be quick in loading and should use as less resources as possible.
I hope you understand what i am trying to say here. If you keep on adding stuff like useless flash animations and other stuff you're just making your app. bulky. And when designing a business app. you never need the themes thing. A business app. should be straight to the point with the business customization it requires and not the looks etc.
For eg. Business App. Requires:
- users to add new fields or change what he wants in the reports or designing his own reports etc.
For eg. what Business App. does not Requires:
- ability to change themes etc.
According to me there should be no themes at all.
Thanks!
1) The flash symbol does have a purpose...again you have not used the application so you have to be careful when you assume. If the symbol is clicked it brings up the SPI homepage (http://www.jakrauseinc.com/spi/spi.asp). I did not want nor did the client want a single text hyperlink, the client wanted something attractive so the SPI logo is used with a click event opening up a URL.
2) The design is universal and consistant to THIS application
3) Bugs in the design *** :confused: :confused: .... designs don't have bugs...code has bugs son.
4) All the users have specifically stated to me that the tool is intuitive it guides the end user...but again you have not used it...so it may not look as simple...but it really is...it guides people and requires very little work from the user end.
5) Quick in loading ??? What time did you log into my application and time it????? It is quick...very quick...over VPN, off site, over our portal...on our network .... did you want some sort of access to try it out for yourself ;) . The great thing about it is it does not use barely any resources. It makes connections to a SQL Server only when it needs to make a connection. I have designed it very efficiently because of my experience with SQL Server. I don't use direct SQL statements which many of the users use on this forum. I use stored procedures with very STRICT SQL clauses. You wont find a lick of SQL Statements in the client application and no bound data whatsoever.
You have to understand the needs of a client, which many programmers do not understand. If you don't do what the client expects than you wont be making much money.
BTW not having themes? You mean I have to stick to the colors that YOU think are correct? Who are you to say???? Windows sure lets me change themes...how did they go wrong? The joel article which Merri posted sure states that the functionality should be very similiar to windows...Great add on if you ask me...I rarely see programs which have it that need it. One of the biggest applications SAP allows me to change my themes. So when I use your application you're telling me I'm forced to use YOUR colors and layout ??? Wrong wrong wrong
Anything else :bigyello::D
You are all arguing about something that has no answer!
There is no right and wrong answer to this question.
Why on earth do you have to make an app use as little resources as possible? Errr...Rubbish. What you don't want to do is make your app use too much resources so that it becomes slow and laggy...there is a huge difference.
What's wrong with flash in your app?
Personally I think the annimated logo JHermiz has is pretty nice. If I could do that then I would definately have something like that in my commercial apps.
Personally I wouldn't put themes into my apps, but if I had the codew written, and the user requested it then I might concider it.
BUSINESS LOGIC should NEVER have an affect on the UI. They should be completely independant. If they are not then you have designed your app incorrectly, and will leave yourself more work in the future.
100% of users will never like your app. just the way it is, never gonna happen.
Avis Soft, Business Logic does not mean an app for businesses. It's a term for calculations and events done depending on the data entered in the UI.
Also...design should be universal? What????????? :confused:
Peronally I don't like anybodys app, other than ones I design myself. I design them in a certain way, and I do this because I like it, so, if your app is designed differently then this means I don't do it, and thus I don't like it. Simple :D hahaha, you know what I mean. Everyone has their own preferences when designing forms.
Whoever said help files are rubbish is talking ****.
"Auto Resizing controls" on forms are also ****.
Right, I've had my rant.
You are ALL right, and ALL wrong at the same time.
Woika
Morning Badger...Quote:
Originally posted by Wokawidget
You are all arguing about something that has no answer!
There is no right and wrong answer to this question.
Why on earth do you have to make an app use as little resources as possible? Errr...Rubbish. What you don't want to do is make your app use too much resources so that it becomes slow and laggy...there is a huge difference.
What's wrong with flash in your app?
Personally I think the annimated logo JHermiz has is pretty nice. If I could do that then I would definately have something like that in my commercial apps.
Personally I wouldn't put themes into my apps, but if I had the codew written, and the user requested it then I might concider it.
BUSINESS LOGIC should NEVER have an affect on the UI. They should be completely independant. If they are not then you have designed your app incorrectly, and will leave yourself more work in the future.
100% of users will never like your app. just the way it is, never gonna happen.
Avis Soft, Business Logic does not mean an app for businesses. It's a term for calculations and events done depending on the data entered in the UI.
Also...design should be universal? What????????? :confused:
Peronally I don't like anybodys app, other than ones I design myself. I design them in a certain way, and I do this because I like it, so, if your app is designed differently then this means I don't do it, and thus I don't like it. Simple :D hahaha, you know what I mean. Everyone has their own preferences when designing forms.
Whoever said help files are rubbish is talking ****.
Resizing controls on forms are also ****.
Right, I've had my rant.
You are ALL right, and ALL wrong at the same time.
Woika
Woof woof and AMEN.
Hello!
By universal design i mean that it should look good on all Windows os. And should look good at all the screen resolution like 800x600 etc.
Anyways i am not going to argue anymore on this. Thanks for all the replies and helps etc. :bigyello:
Thanks!
And mine does just that...:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally posted by AvisSoft
Hello!
By universal design i mean that it should look good on all Windows os. And should look good at all the screen resolution like 800x600 etc.
Anyways i am not going to argue anymore on this. Thanks for all the replies and helps etc. :bigyello:
Thanks!
Arrr...I see now. Yes, I agree with you on this.Quote:
Originally posted by AvisSoft
By universal design i mean that it should look good on all Windows os. And should look good at all the screen resolution like 800x600 etc.
No arguing, just healthy discussions. Well it should be anyways.
Woof
I mentioned these two points - and would like to elaborate so that I'm not misunderstood.Quote:
Originally posted by Wokawidget
Whoever said help files are rubbish is talking ****.
"Auto Resizing controls" on forms are also ****.
If your business offers a help-line (phone) or help-desk you will get a call before the user looks at the help file. I know this from 25 years experience with users. But help-files are required - the sales folks like to show them to users when pushing your product. From these two points, I surmized that help-files are smoke-and-mirrors - part of the dog-and-pony show that sales folks put on. I never said they were rubbish - just being practical about what purpose they fill. We do have help-files - usually written "too-techy" - and also go out-of-date with the actual app very easily. We've actually employed help-file writters and are very proud of the help-file production we've done.
Resizing is great - but if you believe that 100% of the users you have will be able to resize intelligently, then you are giving them too much credit. Re-sizing columns in grids, sorting on grid columns - all neat little windows tricks, but to be practical - they exceed the ability of most users.
These opinions are based on the fact that my customers are basically clerks - loading health claims - loading invoices - posting payroll for the week. They've done all that on "dumb-terminals" and mainframes for 2 decades and now that we are putting them into PC/VB/SQL they complain about extra keystrokes - mouse-clicking. We are required (since they pay us) to make them happy and happy means least change. We sit here balancing production of a good VB app (that we can sell) to making those paying the development cost happy.
How on earth can a user resize intelligently??? :confused:
Form resizing, column resizing and positioning are dead easy to code, and for a user to use. How can this possibley exceed the capability of a user?
It is hard designing an app where the majority of the users are ****-wits! :(
I think I would pull rank in certain situations. The user/customer is NOT always right, and giving them EVERYTHING they ask for is wrong on soooo many levels.
Although I do understand what you mean as we did a software upgrade from a COBOL based app to a VB6 one. £2 Million we charged...HAHAAHA...suckers :D They whinged about everything from colors, screen layouts, keypresses...just everything. They couldn't make their minds up. God damn kids of the baby boom era back in the 50's!
UI's are very important and nice clean, functional UI can be way better than one packed with "pointless" stuff like Themes, sounds etc.
If I got someone to build me a house and I told them I wanted part of the house made of soap then he would object. He would be right to object. It's possible to build the house out of soap, but very very unpracticle and can have serious implications later on. I take this on board and decide to go with brick...it's not what I wanted, but it does the job 110% Why can't software be like this??? People have this idea that the customer says "jump" and the developers say "how high"...if you do this then you're a ****e developer...in my opinion anyways :)
Sometimes I feel like getting right in their face over design issues and shouting..."LOOK! Are you a ****ing VB developer?!!! NO?! I thought not. RIGHT! Listen to what I am saying!!! FOR ****S SAKE! If I say it's not possible, or it's very bad to do this, then it's not god damn ****ing possible! I don't tell you how to do your job, so don't tell me how to do mine!!! Raooaoaaaaaar, NOW WHERE's MY SOUP!"
But alas, I wouldn't have a job for long :D
WOka (in ranting mode)
:lol:Quote:
Originally posted by Wokawidget
How on earth can a user resize intelligently??? :confused:
Form resizing, column resizing and positioning are dead easy to code, and for a user to use. How can this possibley exceed the capability of a user?
It is hard designing an app where the majority of the users are ****-wits! :(
I think I would pull rank in certain situations. The user/customer is NOT always right, and giving them EVERYTHING they ask for is wrong on soooo many levels.
Although I do understand what you mean as we did a software upgrade from a COBOL based app to a VB6 one. £2 Million we charged...HAHAAHA...suckers :D They whinged about everything from colors, screen layouts, keypresses...just everything. They couldn't make their minds up. God damn kids of the baby boom era back in the 50's!
UI's are very important and nice clean, functional UI can be way better than one packed with "pointless" stuff like Themes, sounds etc.
If I got someone to build me a house and I told them I wanted part of the house made of soap then he would object. He would be right to object. It's possible to build the house out of soap, but very very unpracticle and can have serious implications later on. I take this on board and decide to go with brick...it's not what I wanted, but it does the job 110% Why can't software be like this??? People have this idea that the customer says "jump" and the developers say "how high"...if you do this then you're a ****e developer...in my opinion anyways :)
Sometimes I feel like getting right in their face over design issues and shouting..."LOOK! Are you a ****ing VB developer?!!! NO?! I thought not. RIGHT! Listen to what I am saying!!! FOR ****S SAKE! If I say it's not possible, or it's very bad to do this, then it's not god damn ****ing possible! I don't tell you how to do your job, so don't tell me how to do mine!!! Raooaoaaaaaar, NOW WHERE's MY SOUP!"
But alas, I wouldn't have a job for long :D
WOka (in ranting mode)
Hey I cannot agree more than this...however, case and point is..the end user needs to take the responsibility to learn the tool. You can only make a tool so much foolproof, after that it's time for them to learn how to use the tool. If user's complain than it's probably because they did not read the instructions.Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
I mentioned these two points - and would like to elaborate so that I'm not misunderstood.
If your business offers a help-line (phone) or help-desk you will get a call before the user looks at the help file. I know this from 25 years experience with users. But help-files are required - the sales folks like to show them to users when pushing your product. From these two points, I surmized that help-files are smoke-and-mirrors - part of the dog-and-pony show that sales folks put on. I never said they were rubbish - just being practical about what purpose they fill. We do have help-files - usually written "too-techy" - and also go out-of-date with the actual app very easily. We've actually employed help-file writters and are very proud of the help-file production we've done.
Resizing is great - but if you believe that 100% of the users you have will be able to resize intelligently, then you are giving them too much credit. Re-sizing columns in grids, sorting on grid columns - all neat little windows tricks, but to be practical - they exceed the ability of most users.
These opinions are based on the fact that my customers are basically clerks - loading health claims - loading invoices - posting payroll for the week. They've done all that on "dumb-terminals" and mainframes for 2 decades and now that we are putting them into PC/VB/SQL they complain about extra keystrokes - mouse-clicking. We are required (since they pay us) to make them happy and happy means least change. We sit here balancing production of a good VB app (that we can sell) to making those paying the development cost happy.
Lets face it .. we all buy appliances or electronic items..and we f*** up and we start bit*****, this is all human nature. But its our own fault for throwing away those damn instructions.
You need help files whether you like it or not..and if you dont have them who are you going to point fingers at when the user complains? At least in my case I can say hey look helps there..use it.
Now, I haven't read the other replies, so this might have been said before but:
I've had a lot of experience designing various applications for a rather wide range of customers. What I've found in almost all cases is that people want something light and sharp. I always use a the standard form color for my forms - which windows is allowed to change ofcourse, but most people where I work don't tend to apply their own color schemes. In addition to that I always use flat controls... and, this might sound silly, but people tend to like it - dark blue borders, a bit like what's in windows XP, but darker, and only 1px wide.
The image is an old thing I had an image of lying around, it doesn't have the blue borders(though I think the final version does, I can't remember), but everything's packed up tight, and I used standard colors to show the difference between results and input numbers(results also being bold), and in the final 3 results at the bottom of the form, I used an extra 1px line to show that's where your attention needs to be at. Like this or not, there's a lot of controls on it, and it looks as it should in 800x600 =).
Just my 2 pixels
jhermiz - I'm curious - how do you get a screen shot into your post.
I do a ctrl/alt/printscrn - which does a "copy" of my current window - but it doesn't allow me to paste it into a "post".
You cant just paste it into a post.Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
jhermiz - I'm curious - how do you get a screen shot into your post.
I do a ctrl/alt/printscrn - which does a "copy" of my current window - but it doesn't allow me to paste it into a "post".
You need to upload your files to a file server and use the IMG tags.
Also use alt printscreen that will give you just the form (or area you need).
Yeah - I see that IMG button here - but what do you mean by a file server? What kind of file do you put the image into? I'm probably being really stupid right now - but this makes no sense to me.
You need to host your images somewhere like a server...I host mine on a file server..and I just link to them here.Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
Yeah - I see that IMG button here - but what do you mean by a file server? What kind of file do you put the image into? I'm probably being really stupid right now - but this makes no sense to me.
To make more sense...VBForums is not responsible to hold or paste actual screen shots...that would cost them too much money. What if you had a 1 meg drawing and you wanted to post it :(. I dont think these folks want to pay for that.
What I do is place all my screen shots on a server (can be your own file server, or any free host you find online (free hosts usually suck though)). Once you upload the image or screen shot you simply use the IMG tag like this:
VB Code:
Make sense ?
Thanks for clearing that up. This stinks though - if the files get deleted, old posts will simply have missing info. I hate when the data gets separated into two locations - bad design ;)
Does everyone know where the image is stored? How secure is this?
What are you talking about ? There is no design to this..this is TCP / IP networking. Images I'm just posting for the forum, this had nothing to do with the actual application.Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
Thanks for clearing that up. This stinks though - if the files get deleted, old posts will simply have missing info. I hate when the data gets separated into two locations - bad design ;)
Does everyone know where the image is stored? How secure is this?
Does it matter if people know where the image is stored ?? Its an image, this image becomes a hyperlink...to you that hyperlink is a file server...so you cant just go in and delete it. You'd have to have the appropriate rights or a pure connection to www or ftp.
"How secure is it"
Im asking a serious question here...how much web work have you done? Can you hack my site www.web-impulse.com or microsoft's? Can you steal or delete my images on my site?
If you answered no than that answers how secure storage is on those screen shots I took.
You can link directly to them here:
http://www.jakrauseinc.com/jhermiz/1.jpg
http://www.jakrauseinc.com/jhermiz/2.jpg
http://www.jakrauseinc.com/jhermiz/3.jpg
...
etc...
The image tag just alleviates from someone having to go there and look. It is still stored on the server side (my side) not on vbforums. Vbforums just references it :thumb:
jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I'm upto 2100 posts...I prolly spent 100 here :D :bigyello:
Where's badger at...am I close badger :lol:
I was kidding about the design - seems like having a "text post" on one server and the "image" parts on another server is a poor design - just kidding though.
I've done absolutely no web work whatsoever.
If you only need one picture in your post and don't have access
to store your pictures on a server, then this is what to do...
Attach the picture to your post and add the following to you post
surrounded by the img tags.
Then after you post it, edit your post and get the postid from theCode:http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=88888888
addressbar and replace the 88888888 with that id number.
This way vbforums stores the image for you as the attachment
and you refer your img tag to the attachment.
See ex. below.
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.p...postid=1740028
:D
Well you just dont give them write access. Again anyone can right click on an image and do a save as. But if you have files on a server that arent linked and you dont want people to take them thats simple, dont give them the rights to.Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
I was kidding about the design - seems like having a "text post" on one server and the "image" parts on another server is a poor design - just kidding though.
I've done absolutely no web work whatsoever.
And by secure, I was just curious - since I've got a small business server here - on the internet - if I could put the images there. And yes, I have fears about people hacking into my little world all the time :(
Its all the basics of networking and the TCP/IP layers.
Once you get something like a server setup, you patch the hell out of it, and you assign rights (user, groups, the world).
Look up chmod 755 ;)
You don't need to store the jpegs on your own server; you can store them here. It's a little awkward but to do it you attach the jpg file and submit the post. Then you click on the attachment, copy the URL, and edit the post adding the url surrounded by IMG tags.
Sweet I got loads of jpgs that are huge in size :) you guys gonna support me :). Can I use you guys as an ftp:eek:Quote:
Originally posted by MartinLiss
You don't need to store the jpegs on your own server; you can store them here. It's a little awkward but to do it you attach the jpg file and submit the post. Then you click on the attachment, copy the URL, and edit the post adding the url surrounded by IMG tags.
I beat you to it Martin.
:)
Yes you did, but your method is slightly different from mine.Quote:
Originally posted by RobDog888
I beat you to it Martin.
:)
True, but same idea.
:)
Marty got snipped :DQuote:
Originally posted by MartinLiss
Yes you did, but your method is slightly different from mine.
OK guys I've already considered moving this thread to ChitChat or maybe a "graveyard" like the General Developer forum so let's try to cut out the chatter.
my opinion of jhermiz's forms and designs is a good one, i really like the designs, where did you gte the little images for your command buttons from
The majority I had to modify to fit our needs in PS :-). Some are of some of our current systems.Quote:
Originally posted by Pino
my opinion of jhermiz's forms and designs is a good one, i really like the designs, where did you gte the little images for your command buttons from
There are also some nice sites for XP buttons but I could never get them to look right in my forms. So I just use PS to modify what we need or use what we have.
Thanks for the positive (people hate to give compliments) response, most people hold from that.
Hi jhermiz!
Can i have the icons you have ? Or anyone else have icons ?
Thanks!
Yea, it's not a bad icon set...can you post a link to it?
He won't be on-line for a few hrs yet :(
Wooooooooooooof
Hello!
I have a small VB icon set. It has visual basic icons! :)
Thanks!
I hope this zip is small enough to be attached... the zip includes very nice looking icons I've downloaded from the web :) Most of them are in 32 x 32 and all should be freeware (I'm not sure if these can be used in commercial software...).
Edit Boo, I had to take most of the icons out. There are now only two ICL files, which are icon libraries. Can be opened in programs such as IrfanView and Microangelo.
Uhmm so just to open the files I need to download another program...come on I can make icons in PS faster.Quote:
Originally posted by Merri
I hope this zip is small enough to be attached... the zip includes very nice looking icons I've downloaded from the web :) Most of them are in 32 x 32 and all should be freeware (I'm not sure if these can be used in commercial software...).
Edit Boo, I had to take most of the icons out. There are now only two ICL files, which are icon libraries. Can be opened in programs such as IrfanView and Microangelo.
If anyone is interested in icons or images I am available for a few hours...not for free though :)
:bigyello:
WOW ..It took me quite awhile to read all of the posts in this thread :rolleyes:
1st. Avis, theres nothing wrong with your form there, I'd try the textboxes witha flat style ( i love the look it gives them ) instead of them sinking into the form :eek:
2nd. provide tooltips on anything that "might" confuse a user. lol they will appreciate it :p
3rd. I like jhermiz design...dunno wut anyone is talkin bout if they said it was bad/ugly and whatnot ....how would you feel if someone came out and said "your app looks terrible " ....something like that must have taken alot of time and work. :afrog:
Just my 3 and a half cents.
ice
:wave:
jhermiz: but your icons don't look even as near as good as these do :D (and this time just kidding)
ICL files should be supported fine by Windows and it is possible to extract the icons using VB. I don't have the time to look for the code, work time soon.
arf arf :pQuote:
Originally posted by Merri
jhermiz: but your icons don't look even as near as good as these do :D (and this time just kidding)
ICL files should be supported fine by Windows and it is possible to extract the icons using VB. I don't have the time to look for the code, work time soon.
jhermiz - the reason I asked about posting images the other day was because I was thinking of putting one of my forms up for a look over by the "crew"...
But I thought twice - my ego wasn't up to it :D
I can't believe this post is still going...
IMHO, if your users like your design and you get paid for it - then forget asking the peanut gallery...
Quote:
Originally posted by szlamany
jhermiz - the reason I asked about posting images the other day was because I was thinking of putting one of my forms up for a look over by the "crew"...
But I thought twice - my ego wasn't up to it :D
I can't believe this post is still going...
IMHO, if your users like your design and you get paid for it - then forget asking the peanut gallery...
haha I know but it is fun posting :)...plus I learn from others.
See attached design...
If this was meant to be commented:
Even though that one is clear, I think it might have some need for compacting the design and also getting rid of the one pixel wide black lines. The stuff on the form aren't in standard places, it makes the design a bit hard to go through atleast with my eyes. Not a great work of art. Probably does its work, but could be better.
Wow - I was hoping this thread was long forgotten :bigyello: