Uninstall it! » User Interface

designing good user interfaces (2 – Removing Useless Clutter)

Uninstall — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:05:06 +0000

Useless clutter

Less clutter

The groupbox in the first UI is completely useless and it only adds more clutter for free, so it has been removed in the second UI. What we get is a less cluttered UI and every widget is grouped by the tabwidget.

designing good user interfaces (1 – Label Alignment)

Uninstall — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:07:21 +0000

Bad Label Alignment

Good Label Alignment

The first UI has a wrong label alignment (KDE 3.x alignment), while the second UI has the right label alignment (KDE 4.x alignment).
HIG on techbase

Label placement in forms

designing good user interfaces (0)

Uninstall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:34:34 +0000

Example of a bad ui layout.

Example of a good ui layout.

The first UI (the bad one) has a complex grid layout which is cluttered and confused, while the second UI has a better layout which looks like a book page that can be read easily from left to right and from top to bottom.
The second UI uses more vertical space, but we must not forget that one of our primary goals is to provide usable UIs.