Hi Mihai,

I think the point is that many people try to differenciate their
applications by using font changes. I tend to use the system font except
for special cases where I want some title on a dialog or something to stand
out so I sort of agree with you, but I also use skinning in my application
to make the buttons and checkboxes and radio buttons, etc. have a different
look and feel so as to make the application a little nicer looking. It's
all a matter of opinion of course.

I do agree that using a monospaced font in dialogs these days is kind of
ugly ;o)

I think the font listed on the .gif you referenced is quite easy to read :o)

Tom

"Mihai N." <nmihai_year_2000> wrote in message
news:hain
[..]

> It's all a matter of opinion of course.

Sure, I can understand that.
My opinion is, in general, strongly against custom controls.
It does affect my atitude towards the application and sometime my
shoping decisions.



> I do agree that using a monospaced font in dialogs these days is kind of
> ugly ;o)
>
> I think the font listed on the .gif you referenced is quite easy to read

Actually, the font is not monospaced. It is is a bitmap font, and you can
still use it. Just set your dialog font to "System" :-)
(in fact, even the VS 2005 new application wizard still generated the "About"
dialog with the font set to "System" :-)

"Mihai N." <nmihai_year_2000> wrote in message
news:hain

> My opinion is, in general, strongly against custom controls.

I tend that way too. However I do relent. I have a customised button
derived from CButton which shows both an image and text and a grid control
derived (with quite a lot of work) from CListBox.

Neither of these, therefore, is probably what you mean by a custom control
as both are derived from common controls. But a fully customised grid
control would be useful - I nearly bought one in.

Actually I did write some custom controls for Windows 3.1, complete (IIRC)
with all the extra code required to integrate them with the resource editor
in the IDE. But it all proved a complete waste of time when the 32bit
compiler came out and the IDE wouldn't recognise them :-( It seems a
long time ago now, but that was what put me off custom controls.

Dave

In article news:<Xns9B8BDDB732B33MihaiN>, Mihai N. wrote:
> Thing is: there is a setting in control panel where I can set the
> fonts I want for labels, buttons, titles, menus, etc.
> The includes font family, style, size, foreground and background
> colors. If I want bold, I set it there. Any aplication should
> respect my preference. If not, it is crap.

Hear, hear!

Don't break the GUI standard just to be "clever".

Cheers,
Daniel.

In article news:<FB46FA02-E8E0-4003-9717-D938AB7FB96A>,
Tom Serface wrote:
> ... I ... use skinning in my application to make the buttons and
> checkboxes and radio buttons, etc. have a different look and feel
> so as to make the application a little nicer looking.

As application isn't meant to look "nice", it's meant to be easy to
understand and easy to use -- which means that it should have an
appearance and a behaviour that is consistent with the platform and
with all other applications running on that platform.

Skinning is evil. It compromises the uniform look and feel of the GUI
and can -- in bad cases -- lead to users not knowing how the
application will behave or how to drive it.

There are good reasons for the existence of GUI design guides, and one
ignores the guides at ones peril.

Microsoft itself does NOT help in this by changing the appearance of
the GUI for no good reason between releases. XP with the classic style
looks just about enough like Win2k to be called consistent, but Vista
breaks even this.

Cheers,
Daniel.

"Mihai N." <nmihai_year_2000> wrote in message
news:hain
[..]
>
> Thing is: there is a setting in control panel where I can set the fonts
> I want for labels, buttons, titles, menus, etc.
> The includes font family, style, size, foreground and background colors.
> If I want bold, I set it there. Any aplication should respect my
> preference. If not, it is crap.
>
> Would you appreciate an application that uses an italic font size 5
> throughout? Just because I think it's cool?
>

No, what I'm discussing is *not* using the same font throughout, but
tastefully boldfacing different parts of the dialog. MS even does this with
the list control. If you go to My Computer in XP, you will see the
different groups such as "Hard Disk Drives", "Network Drives", etc. in
boldface. I am simply extending this concept into my own dialogs where I
put some static controls as boldface.

-- David

"Daniel James" <wastebasket> wrote in message
news:a087

> Skinning is evil. It compromises the uniform look and feel of the GUI
> and can -- in bad cases -- lead to users not knowing how the
> application will behave or how to drive it.

Agreed. I *hate* Windows Media Player.

Dave

David Ching wrote:
> "Colin Peters" <cpeters> wrote in message
> news:d1_5
>>
> I am using products by Xenocode (PostBuild and Application Studio ISV)
> to create .exe's with virtualized environments that do not require .NET
> to be installed on the systems running them. They are quite great!
>
> -- David
>
Thnaks, I'll have to take a look. Cool name too....Xenocode.

Well, I'd guess enough people disagree with you so as to convince the MFC
group to include a ton of new skinning features in the standard MFC build.
I guess, like I said, it's a matter of opinion. However, it's possible to
have a slightly different look (like just about every version of Office),
but still act like a typical Windows program. I try to make sure my
applications look similar on all releases. I know not everyone agrees with
this sort of direction.

Tom

"Daniel James" <wastebasket> wrote in message
news:a087
[..]

"Tom Serface" <tom> wrote in message
news:f029

> Well, I'd guess enough people disagree with you so as to convince the MFC
> group to include a ton of new skinning features in the standard MFC build.
> I guess, like I said, it's a matter of opinion. However, it's possible to
> have a slightly different look (like just about every version of Office),
> but still act like a typical Windows program. I try to make sure my
> applications look similar on all releases. I know not everyone agrees
> with this sort of direction.

I allow a customisable window background colour. Wow! (Not so much a
"skin" as a slight suntan.) I find it helps to distinguish which version of
my software is running if each has a different frame window background
colour.

But to keep Mihai and friends happy one choice is always "use standard
windows colour".

Dave

Yes, this is what I'm talking about as well... I think it makes a program
look nicer. Of course it means testing in each intended language to be sure
it looks good in all of them as well.

Tom

"David Ching" <dc> wrote in message
news:fccb
[..]

> If you go to My Computer in XP, you will see the
> different groups such as "Hard Disk Drives", "Network Drives", etc. in
> boldface. I am simply extending this concept into my own dialogs where I
> put some static controls as boldface.

The main difference: MS spends millions of dollars on user research.

Even small details get tried with all kind of variations on non-geek users.
Add to it the many hours spent on testing for all languages, all kind
of resolutions, checking accesibility, security, etc.
This is another reason why I trust system controls and mistrust the rest.

In most cases the skins I see look like are designed in Photoshop on
Mac by a guy who knows zip zero about how software is actually used
by real users.

In the other class are small applications where the improvements
are only validated with the wife opinion (if that :-)

In general fully skinned applications are the worse offencers.
These are done by medium size companies that have enough money to
sink in such things.

The 1 guy company writing smaller applications discovers fast enough
that a full skinning takes a lot of work with little benefit, so
he will quickly stop. And live with small improvements, like a bold
label, another label color/font, bitmap background. These are
not quite owner draw/custom controls, and most of the basic
functionality is not damaged.

But then, these guys keep looking with envy at the skinned stuff.
So they ask for such "features" in MFC :-)

"Mihai N." <nmihai_year_2000> wrote in message
news:hain
[..]
> The 1 guy company writing smaller applications discovers fast enough
> that a full skinning takes a lot of work with little benefit, so
> he will quickly stop. And live with small improvements, like a bold
> label, another label color/font, bitmap background. These are
> not quite owner draw/custom controls, and most of the basic
> functionality is not damaged.
>
> But then, these guys keep looking with envy at the skinned stuff.
> So they ask for such "features" in MFC :-)
>

I agree slight variations on system controls is the most bang for the buck,
but even that is railed on for going against the user's Control Panel
settings. In this day of RIA and web apps. I think Windows apps had better
start looking better than 1 font on a dialog. I agree skins may not be the
way to go, but this mindset of respecting user Control Panel settings for
items that were defined 20+ years ago (when a window was only supposed to
have 1 font) is not compelling even now and will become even more dated as
time goes on. So it rankles me when people start demoting what I see as
progress in using font variety to a good advantage.

I also think your perspective works well for a large company producing large
apps that are widely deployed in many languages, but is not entirely
relevant to others whose customers are more niche and less
internationalized. In my projects, localization is a concern but it is not
important enough to dictate limiting the UI just to make it easier to
localize.

-- David

Mihai: so I'm curious what your opinion of WPF is.

I mean: it seems to me that you are very sober (in Italian I would say
"francescano" :) in GUI designing, and considering that you work in an
important software house and you are expert in internationalization,
there must be some good reason for your opinion..., e.g. only one font
in dialog, no bold face, etc.

So, are you against the style of WPF GUIs, that seems to me to be all
kind of skinning, rich of colors, "Hollywood-style" graphics, etc. ?

Thanks,
Giovanni

You are so amenable. :o)

Tom

"David Webber" <dave> wrote in message
news:6036
[..]