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UI Design Dos and Don'ts

developer.apple.com

41–50 of 121 posts

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#42
post #31

Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more refl…

This very page is also a bad offender of the very first principle...

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#44
post #19

I was hoping for something like: http://dropbox.scripting.com/dave/misc/appleHumanInterfaceGu... 300 pages of detailed ui/ux guidelines and rationales. It honestly was a joy to read when I first came across it 15 years ago.

The article links to the iOS HIG. https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...

Its available on the iBook store too.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#45
"Images that are not @2x will appear blurry"

That's quite an exaggeration.

"Blurry" is not what most people would perceive. They won't perceive a problem with the site at all and in most cases will never notice or care.

Sure it's nice to use hi-res images, but I prefer using just one image that is slightly higher resolution than normal... maybe 1.5x and then increase compression. The result is noticeably better, satisfying the perception of "sharp" but still uses just one image and often only a very small increase in file size.

Delivering two versions of the image for all your regularly produced content is an inefficient practice relative to the benefits IMHO.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#46
post #31

Apple has been a driving force for better UI in a number of areas, but some of their choices are baffling. Even in this page, the "Contrast" section uses a large black header, but a small grey font on a white background for the content. Who chose Shift-Command-] for switching tabs in Safari? Why include the power switch in the keyboard, which makes it challenging to clean? Could their glossy displays be any more refl…

This very page is also a bad offender of the very first principle...

Definitely. The titles seems related to the image above them, not below as intended.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#47
post #22

Agree with these, but in my opinion, the date selector wheels in iOS are a terrible design. Three rolling wheels just doesn't map to most people's concept of a calendar

This is a great example of when it's more important to stick with a familiar interface (i.e. the calendar) than to go with something that is "designed for touch".

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#48
Their "contrast" section belies their determination, since the text there is grey on a white background, and true black on white would unquestionably be more readable. (looking at UI designers more generally:) I'm so sick of UIs that have repetitive, huge, contrasty, readable headings... only to have the core useful text be grey-on-something, tiny, possibly italic, and so on. Idiots, and they are legion. More subtle issues like older folks having lower visual resolution, and many folks (men mostly) having significant color blindness, never seem to occur to UI designers as a problem.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also feel like iOS has gone downhill. I know they were trying to get away from skeuomorphic design, but I feel they went too far in the opposite direction. Everything is flat, it's hard to tell what is a button that can be clicked on sometimes (usually it's just a blue label with no distinguishing background), and there seems to be a frequent lack of contrast generally.

Yeah, also I feel the rainbow colours with a Gaussian blur looks pretty dated too - reminds me of Aero Glass. Android at its best looks much nicer, though it can be very inconsistent, even within Google-developed apps.

AeroGlass looks still very nice and fresh in Windows 7. Windows 8x/10 theme is too flat for a desktop OS and the color choices imo plain ugly. Microsoft removed most of the complex transparent effects because the Nokia/MS WinPhones 7-8 devices were too slow to handle them, that's why the desktop has to suffer as well. The iOS 7-9 and OSX themes have a lot better colors.

Re: UI Design Dos and Don'ts

#50
post #22

Agree with these, but in my opinion, the date selector wheels in iOS are a terrible design. Three rolling wheels just doesn't map to most people's concept of a calendar

Do you have a better example? I don't find the select diag's like in Desktop Chrome easier to use especially on a mobile. I think what they've done is better than anything else I've seen. With enough following it'd become the norm like anything else.

Cultured Code's date picker for Things has been my favorite: http://culturedcode.cachefly.net/things/videos/things-iphone...
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