Here are a few arbitrary guidelines for full-screen dialogue
templates. These are the ones I like to use. This being a BBS, though,
these are only guidelines and not rules!
- Use different colours for different types of fields. I played it safe
and used the Turbovision scheme: white-on-blue for fields where you key in
values and black-on-cyan for fields where you just have to press a key to
make a change (i.e. lists and toggles).
- Place brief instructions to the right of each field that doesn't
behave in any obvious manner. I like to give the valid range of each number
field, and a string like `Space to change' next to lists and toggles.
- My buttons are like Turbovision-on-dope. They're `shaded' buttons,
with red background for cancel-type buttons and green for everything else.
- Lists and toggles don't use any padding. If you use different
backgrounds for these controls, they'll look strange compared to the
others. I like to put two spaces on either end of lists. These are in the
same colour as the list and work as backgrounds. For toggles, I use a space
on either side and brackets, all in the same colour attributes as the
field itself: black on cyan. It makes things look much better.
- Don't clutter things! Unless necessary, use every second line of the
screen for fields. Otherwise, fields touch each other, looking ugly.
- If space permits, have a brief legend at the bottom of the dialogue
box. You can list any of the key bindings for Help (Ctrl-R), field-help
(Ctrl-O), Redraw (Ctrl-L), OK (Ctrl-S) or Cancel (Ctrl-C). The first two
should probably always be there.
- Don't change the location or ordering of buttons in a dialog! You
should try to keep the user interface consistent. Of course, if you move
buttons around, things will break because your dialogue code will be
looking for the buttons in the wrong places.
Alphabetic index
This page was generated with the help of DOC++.