Re: handling the visual aspect of GUI applications
Hi there,
well, may be I'm not the right person to answer this, because I had been sighted for a quite long time before and thus I'm designing guis by my visual imagination, but I can tell you at least some things to follow.
It isn't very hard at all. Just keep in mind to:
1. never make things overlapping. An label going through edit field or a button is something you don't want.
2. Always make your gui regular, or at least compose it using regular parts. I mean, when you for example want to make a label for an edit field, it's fine to place it usually left from it or above it, but never above and slightly or more to the left, so you end with a some strange diagonal, the same goes for other directions. Use rectangular structure when possible, that's your best bet.
Now regarding why it's easy, nowadays technologies like WPF, or Android activity layout doesn't use absolute positioning like before, but relative instead.
That means, you specify in which position are components from each other's view, instead of one solid point. That's great for us, because you specify for example just one label to the upper left part of screen and then design everything under it. Libraries will then work out, how to place it on every display, so it looks regularly.
Another thing is, how big should components be and how far from each other. Here again goes the rule, make things regular. Too small label near a big edit looks strange, as well as big text and small field. Also objects too close to each other, with a large space around them are not usual, the opposite extreme as well.
That's why there are grids in WPF, or layouts on Android. What I have found very useful here is the ability to make percentional layouts.
For example, I want an activity with a title, view area and three buttons on the bottom.
I start with a whole screen, which I divide to three parts. the view is the most important part, so I give it 80%. The rest will be divided between heading and buttons. I want to have buttons in a bar on the bottom of screen, and will give them thus 10%. The heading will take the rest - 10%. Of course buttons should be bigger than text, however that's not a problem in this case, because 10% is just an area, with text in the center, while the most of space will be just a margin.
Next, I want to design buttons in their area. They are all equal, so i give them 33% of the bar and make just a thin margin, so it looks like a bar splitted to parts, instead of individual buttons lying one beside each other.
Using percents for this purpose, or even better fractions, makes everything imaginable even by your fingers. Just take your smartphone and use the screen as a reference - imagine 1/10 from it, then 1/3 for each button etc.
I can't tell if this would work for someone blind from his bird, I can't even imagine it, but I thing with some practice it could be possible.
May be someone who haven't been sighted before will describe it better.
Best regards
Rastislav
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