官术网_书友最值得收藏!

Chapter 1. Layouts and General Content Organization

In this chapter, we will cover:

  • Liquid versus fixed layouts
  • Navigation pane and how to create one from scratch
  • Window management and positioning
  • Wizards
  • Progressive disclosure showing additional controls on demand
  • Control docking with Dock Panel
  • Journal navigation
  • Tabs
  • Status bar area

Introduction

Before we start building any application, regardless of being a web application built with Silverlight or a typical desktop application built with Windows Presentation Foundation, we will be faced with making some very basic and extremely important decisions. Will our application be able to scale to all of the different screens and resolutions or are we going for a fixed size? Other than that, how are we going to navigate through data presented in our application? How do we deal with windows and their positions, sizes, and states? We might go further and ask ourselves can we conceive our application as the number of steps that users have to go through to complete one or more tasks? In that case, we might consider using the wizard UI pattern how to create wizards and use Aero Wizard guidelines instead of older and obsolete Wizard97 guidelines.

What will happen if we present too much data and information to the users, especially the data is irrelevant at the moment? It might lead to user confusion and dissatisfaction. Then, we can consider using the progressive disclosure and interesting UI patterns, which will help us cope with the "control and data overload" challenges.

When we change the screen resolution or resize our windows or pages (please note that throughout this book these terms are being used to designate both, windows as parts of desktop applications and pages as parts of web applications, and in many cases UI patterns are same for both of those), controls might need to change their position, or even size. How do we implement and efficiently use control docking and scaling in those scenarios?

Tabs are really useful: they enable us to put different content and controls on them. but despite them being so well-known, they are often misused and their usage can lead to a user's frustration. How do we use tabs properly and avoid having our users being frustrated and unhappy with our UI?

Often, applications need to communicate information to their users. Some use pop-up windows, message boxes, or status bars. When should you consider using a status bar in your applications and when might it be a better idea to use some other UI pattern?

This introduction has asked a lot of relevant questions. Now, it's time to proceed to some concrete answers and patterns.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 榆林市| 玉林市| 额尔古纳市| 顺义区| 泽库县| 宁陕县| 色达县| 始兴县| 邓州市| 锡林郭勒盟| 阜新市| 杭州市| 涿鹿县| 嘉定区| 营口市| 咸宁市| 黄浦区| 唐山市| 永宁县| 新乡市| 民乐县| 喀喇沁旗| 茌平县| 武宣县| 汾阳市| 常州市| 平陆县| 灌南县| 清远市| 上思县| 象山县| 成安县| 伊川县| 新龙县| 广州市| 会理县| 祁东县| 耒阳市| 绥宁县| 浙江省| 临夏市|