User Interface Stuff

I might organise this at some point but for now it's a load of stuff I'll probably want to reference later.

I have a number of screenshots for reference, and some bad websites.

UI links

Some of these should be required for reading for any software developer.

Guidelines and References

Gnome Human Interface Guidelines

The Gnome project have a reasonably detailed guide.

KDE User Interface Guidelines

Not as in-depth as Gnome's, alas.

Aqua Human Interface Guidelines

Not that Apple pay any attention to it.

MacOS 8 Human Interface Guidelines

Who's the daddy ? This is.

The Microsoft Windows User Experience

No, not it crashed. MS's UI guidelines.

Tog's First Principles

UI by first principles.

User Interface Design for Programmers

Joel Spolsky's book. A must-read.

User Interface Design

Common Front Group's introduction to UI design.

Usability glossary

And that's what it is.

HCI bibliography

Tons of stuff here.

Articles

The Fly UI

User interface design at work.

Are users stupid ?

Everybody is stupid, but it doesn't excuse poor UI.

Why Free Software usability tends to suck

MPT preaches it. Read this.

Why Free Software usability tends to suck even more

And this.

Free software and good user interfaces

A good article by Havoc Pennington.

A direct response to "Free software and good user interfaces"

Unfortunately Mosfet just doesn't get it.

Usability and Efficiency

People who think usability is about making things slower should read this.

Why easy of use doesn't happen

Bullet points. Probably true.

Designing Apple Help

A good description of what UI design looks like.

Computing the Case Against User Interface Consistency

A famous, but rather silly, article.

Usability and Open Source Software

Conclusion ? We suck.

Improving the Usability of Open Source Software: Usability Testing of StarOffice Calc

Another study. Testing StarOffice seems a bit unfair though.

Why technical writers should love Microsoft's Inductive User Interface

Also known as tell me what the fuck an inductive user interface is please.

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient

Allin Cottrell hates word processors. He likes LaTeX. LyX sits in the middle; wonder what he thinks.

A Comparative Study of vi and Emacs from the Perspective of Novice and Regular Users

Emacs wins. How can this be ?

Undo and History

Lots of fodder here.

"Other"

MacOS X Hall of Shame

Yuck.

Usability News

News. About usability.

Usability Views

Usability with a twist apparently

GUI Gallery

Including the infamously bizarre Microsoft Bob.

Bad Human Factors Designs

I call this the *gahhh*!! book. For obvious reasons.

Vischeck

This is neat. See what websites look like under three forms of colour-blindness.

Understanding UI

David K. Every's comparison of UI elements in MacOS Classic and MS Windows. Interesting, though his claim that power is the opposite of ease of use seems highly dubious to me.

Usability Must Die

Well. Indeed.

Perversion Tracker

Bad Mac software. Almost daily ... ouch.

Archives from the golden age of outliners

Dave Winer's pages about outliners.