Need your advice/opinions reguarding interface...

[BruceJ]

I've seen some solutions that scream amature/newbie when I notice lots of inconsistencies in the interface.

I'm at the starting point of a new (huge) project and want to make a choice about some interface issues early on. The project is an Electronic Medical Record system used by many different users and discplines in a hospital. It's likley the users will be flipping between a couple of applications (including DOS type), and typically will interact with the system for 10 or 15 minute intervals throughout the day.

OneQuestion is Field Labels... so where do you put your labels?

[ ] Above the field

[ ] To the Left, and aligned to the LEFT

[ ] to the Left and aligned to the RIGHT

What's your most popular color scheme?

[ ] business grey with crisp flat buttons and icons

[ ] Aqua style with photoShopped glass-like elements and transparent shadows

By the way, the network is LAN and WAN via Citrix. I know this makes some difference in the types of elements used due to speed/banwidth.

[stanley]

Bruce:

Although I tend to put labels to the left, aligned right, you may want to look at the other apps in use at that site and see what the users are already used to. Make it as easy as possible on them.

As far as color scheme is concerned, if you've got PC users, I'd stay away from fancy Aqua elements, as most PC users find that kind of thing alien to them. Stick with something dull and functional. It will also reduce bandwidth strain.

-Stanley

[Leb i Sol]

XP has changed a lot of PC user's perspetive on Aqua-like view.....

although, 1st thing I did on our machines is changed it classisc view

I am up for a combo....throw in a few "fancy" photoshoped tabs or so...while keeping the major "body" of layout in MF native look, stay away from complex paterns.....

something to look at...

http://mostarnet.com/tutorials/filemaker/gui.zip

for some "chopping ideas"

Also, consider the color ( it used max out at 256 in Citrix) depth/compression and resolution/size supported over the terminal-service-alike connections

post more if u need links to GUI & photoshop...

Take care!

[BruceJ]

Hey, nice tutorial. I'll have to give that a try... Honestly I hand't considered the brushed metal interface. That may just be the happy medium between the bubley aqua and the flat 2-D greys.

Question - the "cutting in" - can this be done just as well in FMP?

Also - do you save the image as a PNG to insert into FMP? I've been wondering (I posted the Q a while back with little repsonse) if PNG images were any more friendly to FMP networking than other images. I know that in FMP6, native graphics seemed to be a lot friendlier, where large JPEG or Bitmaps just caused problems if the network was running a little slower.

Also - thanks for the reminder of the Citrix limitations - I had forgotten about that - that may force my decision right there (blahh.. 2-D flat business grey).

[Leb i Sol]

Hi Bruce!

FM actually has pretty decent effect for "tabbed look" on its native buttons (engraved & embossed) but unfortunately when (as expected) when u apply this effect to a graphics button (image) it tends to distort just a bit....this mean that you would have to make 2 images -

tabDOWN.jpg

tabUP.jpg

where both images would be generated in photoshop or alike image editing software.

as far as format of images is concerned I always considered GIFs to be "happy medium" with a pretty decent looks

PNG vs. GIF

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif

but for the "best quality" I would use JPGs

as ur aware JPGs are the "heaviest" when it comes KB.

My suggestion and approach to images is rather simple:

- desing what you LIKE (in RGB mode 72 px resolution)

- make all 3 formats of images

- comapre the file size in KB and in screen resolutions expected

decision is simple....just keep in mind that any time you switch from layout to layout you are RE-loading your images = additional data transfer over the network as I belive that FM doesn't "cache" layouts

here is a small sample attached of layout that we use over small LAN and JPGs used here are "simple in color & not so heavy"...u can always use "text" as "decoration" etc.

Above all, ur right, Citrix resolution and color depth is the breaking point...but I would not fear using GIFs over it as well....

Good luck!

bruce_sample.zip

[rcassidy]

I use PNGs in my 7 solution and have a technique that works very well.

If you want tabs that can expand horizontally well, create a left and a right version of the tab. Each should be rather wide - more than 1/2 the width of the widest tab you expect to make and the right edge of the left tab should transition well to the left edge of the right tab. Make sure you set the transparent channel of the PNGs.

In FM, set the left version to crop/align left, and the right version to crop/align right. Put the two next to each other so they appear as a complete tab and group them. You can now resize the image to exactly what you want and won't get any stretching. The transparency will let you put them anywhere without much concern. If you put a text label on top - centered - when you group, you can just edit that and it'll size as well. Makes creating tabs very, very fast.

You can also stuff the graphics into a global container and do the same thing - the advantage is that it then shifts from layout to data, and you only have one copy of the graphics to deal with. If you put your tab labels in a global repeating then the whole thing is very easily edited or made dynamic.