Question

I’m about to embark on my first attempt at Desktop Software Design and I wanted to know any similarities behind the core principles of Web design that i can take with me or differences or books or articles etc?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I’m just going to throw one tip out there for you to keep in mind that I’ve found different: desktop apps should be responsive. Users on the web are somewhat acclimatized to wait for seconds for their action to take effect (well, not we SO readers, cause we’re using the good stuff :-), but you know what I mean). On a desktop application, that wait can seem interminable, and especially unforgiving is if you lock up the main event loop while processing data for several seconds. Even repeated delays on the order of hundreds of milliseconds can make your app feel sluggish. Use threads to keep the UI snappy, and make sure scrolling and loading operations are crisp. Load lazily or incrementally if necessary.