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The Interface Designer
Integumentary Customization, Part I
Using "Skins" in REALbasic Applications
Issue: 1.4 (February/March 2003)
Author: Toby Rush
Author Bio: Toby Rush is a music instructor, consultant, freelance programmer, web designer, husband and dad in Greeley, Colorado.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 8,787
Starting Page Number: 44
RBD Number: 1424
Resource File(s): None
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
Since software programming began, the primary goal of interface design has always been to make software easy to use. When programmers put effort into the nuances of their application's interface, it's not because they're obsessive perfectionists (though many of them are); they do so because it helps the user use the program more efficiently, thus improving the user's satisfaction with the program.
The creation of the Mac OS in the early eighties was an important event in interface design because it provided programmers with the capability, through the Macintosh Toolbox, to create easy-to-use interfaces. In fact, it was easier to use the predefined, familiar, and well-designed interface elements than it was to create one's own.
As an example of this, consider what it would have been like to write a program on a Commodore 64 with a graphic user interface like the Mac's. If you wanted to create a button, you would have had to design it from the ground up, pixel by pixel. Figuring out when the button was clicked would have also been quite an ordeal; the data provided by the mouse would have had to be continually monitored and tracked, and a determination would need to be made on whether the mouse was within the bounds of the button when it was clicked. Of course, this doesn't even come close to the subtleties of button-clicking: highlighting, determining what happens when the user clicks the button but moves off the button before letting up on the mouse button, handling keyboard shortcuts, and so on.
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Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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