failure_to@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

failure_to@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

Never mind the 'G' for a moment - a developer must be competent to design a
UI, because the UI is the whole reason for the program.

This is a widely-overlooked point, leading to the common mistake of allowing
programmers to design software.

This is not to say every developer has to be a graphic genius - I freely admit
to being of the "not a graphic genius" category, and have gladly paid someone
to write a stylesheet for my JSP-based app.

But the basic principles of great user-interface design are well-documented
(/About Face/, by Alan Cooper, et al., is probably the best) and can be
learned by a decent engineer.

Make it useful - to the point where the user can ignore that there's a
computer and just concentrate on their work.  This has a lot to do with the
behavior of the UI - when, where and how often you have to click, and do you
need a popup just to see what already should have been in the dropdown? -
whether the task flow via the program matches well with the cognitive and
functional needs of the program's user.  Put things near each other on the
screen that work well together or need each other.  Make big text boxes
without too much background surround - enough to make it easy to see which is
which, is all.  And for Gosh' sake align the boxes.  Everything you can do
should be reachable somehow from the main menu; everything else is a shortcut.

Don't make yellow-background text boxes against a purple-background dialog
box.  (I did not make that one up.)\

For most applications, a good UI is self-effacing - the user should never
consciously notice it.  Now do that on a graphic screen and it's a GUI.  Hire
the graphics genius to give it polish, but you as a developer need to know how
to implement what they suggest, and understand their explanations for what
they do.  Ultimately it's your responsibility to make sure the look doesn't
interfere with the feel.

hiya

My head is spinning just from thinking how much I must learn. My
biggest fear is that by the time I learn most of this stuff, it will
already become obsolete ( I'm talking about XML, DHTML, XHTML, JSP )

More of you guys answer my first three question, more I will be able
to draw some conclusions about how and what :)

1)
a) Would you recommend learning as much different technologies as
possible ( JavaScript, servlets, DHTML, XHTML ... ), or would you
recommend more of specialization ( knowing less technologies, but can
go deeply when trying to understand them ) ?

b) Are you guys more of specialized type or do you know alot of
different technologies ?

c) what technologies do you use on regular basis when programming
apps?

2)
Say you guys want to build Yahoo like chat server-client program. What
technologies ( servlets etc ) would you use on:
a) server side
b) client side

3)
Uh, I have 1000 pages long Java book in pdf format, which includes
chapter on servlets, but no mention of J2SE or J2EE. So will I have to
buy a book about J2EE specifically, even if the book I have already
explains Servlets?

4) do you also recommend learning in addition to java some lover level
language ( like C ), to provide additional functionality ( when
needed ) to java server programs?

Truth be told, I have no idea if doing entire Web page all by myself
is even possible. Only thing I can do is ask all of you guys if that
is even recommendable ( I thought that the more different technologies
you know, less good you are at each of these technologies  ) and if
you're able to do entire Web pages by yourself and some time span of
how long would it take for me to become somewhat proficient at this?

If I am to do anything at client side then I should learn all of the
above? *faints*

So thin-client GUI ( made by servlets ) is not the same as (D)HTML
GUI?

thank you kindly for your input

cheers