Do you use GUI conventions? Do you like them?

Shenpen

There is an interesting topic about naming conventions - let's talk about GUI conventions ("Style Guide").

I myself don't like them. They were designed to create a standard, "the same everywhere" interface for not one country, culture or company, but to the whole world. They were designed to radiate a consistent "Navision image". And everything that wants to be good for everybody, will turn become good for nobody.

Customers want software that is good for them and couldn't care less with the whole world.

For this reason I think the following changes to the GUI rules are acceptable:

1) For the most important functionality, use buttons, not menus. Yes, you lose the shortcut possibility, but the problem is users notoriusly forget to click on menus. But if they have a big button with 16 pts fonts in bold, they won't.

2) Colors, colors, colors. Customer name red if over credit limit. Item name red if no stock. Etc., etc. They are extremely important.

Of course if I decide that a development might become a certified add-on, I stick to the GUI standard, because users love big red buttons with 16 pts bold fonts, but Microsoft does not

kine

I have ONE question: Did you ever overtake some company with Navision developed by another NSC which did not look like Navision but like some "colouring book"?

The style is for protection of customer. When he want another NSC, he can change it and the new NSC will not say: But this is not Navision, our predecessor changed it to somethin other...

It is common, I saw many Navisions which was not "Navision" after you open the Main menu... than it is hard to do support for something, which does not look like Navision, the captions of fields are renamed etc...

Kowa

The time needed to work your way into a system where the forms have been heavily customized without observing the GUI-Style Guide are considerably longer.

I know that most users are thankful for direct access buttons for their often-needed functions, but the next update will take longer because merging or recreating the forms will be necessary. You might make the normal user happier, but in the long run the software will turn out to be more expensive for the company.

Still, it would be an improvement if there was a offical new color style guide
to make things easier for users and developers.

janpieter

oh boy all these discussion and just because i posted a code snippet that did not comply to navision standards. Oh well it are good dicussions ..

I quite stick to navision GUI guidelines. But be aware some of then are there for consitent looks but also for performance.

The color thing ... thats is one i break and especially for displaying negative values. But always be aware not to make a christmas tree of your form. Using colors is easally overdone by some enthousiastic stylist.

They should add a property in textboxes.

(and also embedding controls, are there any rules for that )

Shenpen

... documentation, Documentation, DOCUMENTATION!

Maintainability is no excuse to make a software user-hostile - maintainability depends on documentation, not code.

I put down everything in a quite detailed way into documentation triggers.

Then I have a Perl script to extract it from objects saved as txt and send it to the customer.

Every NSC who cannot understand docs like

"Form Item List
Code to Description - OnFormat to make it red when Inventory < Qty. on Sales Order"

deserves to have a hard time.

Do you agree?

DenSter

I don't really think much about GUI guidelines, the way stuff looks is absolutely unimportant to me. I just accept the default sizes and colors and such from the designer, and make my stuff look like standard Navision, like position of buttons (bottom right) and standard behavior (F5 type stuff).

Only if the user specifically asks for changes in color or other cosmetic changes I just do it, after telling them that it will make any upgrade more costly. It's their money, it's their product, I'm there to customize as much as they want. I don't care if they'd want a picture of a monkey on the menu, or change the background color to hot pink, if that's what they want that's what they'll get.

kine

Yes, but sometime you must "guide" your customer. If he asked for something, you can offer another solution in Navision way... of course if he still want the "Yellow background with red dots" you will do it... but you must tell the customer what will happen, when come another employee from the customer and say "I want gray background with purple squares..."... it will cost money (it is good for you, bad for customer...)...