NEXTSTEP Interface
A Visual Guide to the User Interface
A user interface is more than the way an application looks on-screen. It's all the ways the application communicates with the user, and the user with the application. Beeps and other sounds are part of the user interface, as is the speed with which the application reacts to a mouse click. Still, the appearance of an application is a large part of its user interface. This chapter concentrates on how things look. How things act is covered in detail elsewhere.
The appearance of the NEXTSTEP user interface is influenced by the following goals:
A look and feel that's consistent across applications
A simple, elegant appearance that uses shading to give a three-dimensional effect
A color scheme based on black, white, and gray
The mouse as the primary input device
The figure above shows a typical NEXTSTEP
screen (the workspace). In it, two applications have
standard windows visible. (One of them also has a menu and
a panel visible.) Other applications are running but have
no visible presence besides an application icon and perhaps
a miniaturized window (a miniwindow).
Although many applications can run at once, only one is the
active application--the application that accepts all user
input such as typing and mouse clicks. The user can tell
which application is active by checking the menu displayed
in the upper left of the screen; this menu always belongs
to the active application. In the figure above, Edit is the
active application.
An Application's
Windows
Applications present their functionality to the user in
three kinds of windows: standard windows, panels, and
menus. Two other kinds of windows also appear on-screen:
application icons and miniwindows.
All the user's typing goes to the current key window, which
is one of the active application's standard windows or
panels. The user can tell which is the key window by seeing
which one has the black title bar. In the previous figure,
the Find panel is the key window.
Standard Windows
The parts of a
standard window are labeled in the figure below. Not all
standard windows need every part--for example, the first
window displayed by the Workspace Manager has no close
button, so that beginning users won't accidentally close
the one window they need to use the Workspace Manager.
More information on standard windows, as
well as windows in general, is in Chapter 4, "The Window
Interface to Applications."
Panels
Although panels can look just like standard windows, they
have a different role: They help perform secondary
functionality, supporting the work done in standard
windows. Often, they let the user manage the contents of
standard windows in specific ways. For example, in a text
editor, a standard window holds the document being edited,
and panels appear as necessary to get information--for
printing, saving, searching, and so on.
The Font panel shown above is an ordinary
panel. Ordinary panels let the user work in other windows
and panels of the application while the panel is displayed.
Sometimes, however, a panel requires the user's immediate
attention--for example, when the user must confirm a
possibly destructive command. In this case, an attention
panel is used. While an attention panel is displayed, the
user can't do anything else in the application (although
the user can work in other applications). Because attention
panels work so differently from ordinary panels, they look
different, as shown below.
Some panels, such as those shown in this section, have been
standardized and are used in many applications. Using
standard panels in your application helps the user be more
productive, since the user has less to learn. Chapter 5,
"Panels," gives more information about the standard panels
and about creating application-specific panels.
Menus
Menus give the user access to the full breadth of an
application's functionality. A user should be able to get a
good idea of what an application does by looking at its
menu commands. As shown below, the application's menu
commands are grouped into a main menu and its submenus.
A keyboard alternative is a combination of keys that can be
used instead of the mouse for choosing a command. To choose
a command from the keyboard, the user holds down the
Command key while typing the character shown in the menu
command. For example, to quit, the user can either click
the Quit menu command or hold down the Command key and
press q.
The main menu and many submenus are standard--in almost any
application, they should have many of the same commands in
the same order. Chapter 6, "Menus," describes the standard
menus and commands, and gives guidelines on creating
application-specific menus and commands.
Miniwindows
When the user clicks a window's miniaturize button (the
left button in the title bar), the window shrinks down to
become a miniwindow. To get the full-size window again, the
user double-clicks the miniwindow
Application
Icons
Every running application is represented on-screen by an
icon. This icon lets the user choose the application to
work in. To choose an application, the user simply
double-clicks its icon.
An application icon can be either freestanding or docked.
Docked icons line up along the right edge of the screen.
They stay on-screen even when the applications they
represent aren't running; this makes it easy to start up
commonly used applications (by double-clicking the docked
icon). A freestanding icon stays on-screen only as long as
the application is running. Users can customize their
environment by dragging application icons into and out of
the application dock.
The Workspace Manager adds three small dots--similar to an
ellipsis--in the lower left corner of a docked icon when
the application the icon represents isn't running. The
three dots disappear when the application is started up.
While it's starting up, the icon is highlighted in white,
as shown above.
Controls
Controls are
devices that let users give information to or choose an
action in an application. Controls are usually presented to
users in panels or menus, although standard windows can
also contain controls. The following figure shows some of
the controls used in NEXTSTEP. (Although menu commands are
controls, they're used only in menus, so they're
illustrated in the "Menus" section, earlier).
The following sections describe each of the NEXTSTEP
controls in more detail. If necessary, you can also create
your own controls. Chapter 7, "Controls," has more
information.
Buttons
Buttons are the primary controls for starting an action or
setting a state. Users manipulate buttons by moving the
mouse so that the cursor is over the button, and then
clicking--pressing and releasing the mouse button.
Buttons can be very basic--with just a word or picture on a
rectangular, raised-looking button--or they can be more
complex. The following figure shows some simple buttons
that are typical of those used to start actions.
Another kind of button that initiates actions is one that
controls a pull-down list. A pull-down list is a
combination of a button and a menulike list. The button
itself doesn't cause an action (other than displaying the
list), but it lets the user choose a list item that causes
an action. For example:
Buttons that set a state, as opposed to initiating an
action, tend to be a little more complex than action
buttons. Typical state buttons are shown in the figure
below.
A
pop-up list, like a pull-down list, is a combination of a
button and a list. A pop-up list's button doesn't actually
set a state, but it brings up a menulike list from which
the user can choose an option that sets the state. Unlike a
pull-down list, the title of a pop-up list's button changes
to display the list item that was chosen (such as from
Inches to Centimeters).
Text Fields
Text fields let the user enter data by typing. When the
user presses Return or clicks a button associated with the
text field, the application acts on the data.
Sliders
A
slider sets a value between some minimum and maximum. The
user can change the value by dragging the slider's knob.
Color Wells
A color well lets the user set the color of an object or
the color to use for drawing. Color wells are often used in
groups--for example, so the user can choose one color for
the outline of an object and another color for its interior
fill. One of the ways the user can change the color in a
color well is by dragging in a color from another well.
Scrollers
Scrollers let the user control which part of a document or
other data is displayed within a rectangular area. The user
changes which part is displayed by dragging the scroller's
knob or pressing its arrow buttons. The figure above shows
two scrollers, a vertical scroller and a horizontal
scroller.
Browsers and Selection
Lists
A browser shows text data that's organized in a hierarchy,
such as files and folders. A selection list is like a
browser, but it has only a single level. The user moves
down the browser's hierarchy by clicking items that have a
after them. In both browsers and selection lists, the user
can select items by clicking them.
VisualGuide
Release
3.3 Copyright ©1995 by NeXT Computer,
Inc.