Apple OSX Sami Pohjolainen, Gulshan Kumar

 This is a presentation about Apple OSX guidelines  Sami Pohjolainen,  Gulshan Kumar,

 Apple Human Interface Guidelines  These guidelines are designed to assist you in developing products that provide Mac OS X users with a consistent visual and behavioral experience across applications and the operating system.

 Involve users in the design process  Avoid feature cascade  Apply 80 percent solution  Detailed explanations on how to design user input:  Mouse, trackpad, keyboard.  Selecting, editing etc.  Drag-n-drop, text, menus, icons and pointers.  Windows and its controls.  Layout.  Keyboard shortcuts.

 Text is prevalent throughout the interface for such things as button names, pop-up menu labels, dialog messages, and onscreen help.  Using text consistently and clearly is a critical component of interface design.  Supports standard fonts for interface elements.  Provides a standard Colors window for picking colors.

 Aqua offers a photo-illustrative icon style—it approaches the realism of photography but uses the features of illustrations to convey a lot of information in a small space.  The graphic flexibility of Aqua icons can also help users identify files associated with an application.  Application icons should be vibrant and inviting, and should immediately convey the application’s purpose.

 Menus are user interface elements that users refer to frequently, especially when they are seeking a function for which they know of no other interface.  Ensuring that menus are correctly organized, are worded clearly,and behave correctly is crucial to the user’s ability to explore and access the functionality of your applications.  Guideline gives very detailed explanations on how menus work at the most basic level.

Menus appear in several different forms in the Mac OS X interface.

 Help Menu should be the rightmost menu of the application’s menus.  Only one custom item in the Help menu, but if more items, they should appear below the ApplicationName  Help menu should not be a table of contents for the help book

 Help Book is a collection of HTML files that provide onscreen help for a particular product.  Help button is a button that opens Help Viewer to the help content appropriate for the context. A help button is a round button with a question mark.  Help Viewer is a simple browser used to display Apple Help HTML files.  Help Tag is a brief text explanation that appears when the user leaves the pointer hovering over an interface element for a few seconds.

 Aqua is the overall appearance and behavior of Mac OS X. Aqua defines the standard appearance of specific user interface components:  Windows, menus, and controls.  Anti-aliased appearance of text and graphics, shadowing, transparency, and careful use of color.  Uses high-resolution, high-quality graphics and icons that include 32-bit color and transparency.  Keep graphics simple, and use them only when they truly enhance usability.  Don’t overload windows and dialogs with dozens of icons or buttons.  Includes layout guidelines

 Apple explains the design process itself  Involving end-users and how to make design decisions.  What are the characteristic of great software?  High performance, ease of use, attractive appearance, reliability, adaptability, interoperability, and mobility.  Explains principles of HID  Familiarity, simplicity, availability and discoverability etc.  How to prioritize design decisions  Meet minimum requirements, deliver features that end- users expect, differentiate your application.  Software installations and updates  Packaging, installation, assistants and updating.