Gui record maker

[tayl9320]

This is a program that i have been working on. It is supposed to be a phone book with a gui interface. I am having trouble with the program flow. I also have no idea about well structured gui, neither does my teacher. Any assistance on this would be great, thank you. I have also looked over the site, but could not find anything that was helpfull. If there is something on this site that you think may help me with please direct me there, thank you.

[SNIPERDUDE]

This is the first reason why I started to hate Turning's GUI - overly complex when it shouldn't be. Try this.

[DemonWasp]

Without getting into a big formal discussion about UI, here's how I would attack the problem (without ANY training in UI design):

1. Think of all the possible ways you would like to use the software. If it's a phone book, you'll probably want lookups based on (last) name, phone number, or address; there may be others. These are called use cases.

2. Determine the simplest GUI you can to allow each of those use cases to proceed in the simplest fashion possible. Always use controls in the way people are most used to them: buttons do things when clicked, but combo-boxes or text fields generally don't, for example.

3. Ask someone unfamiliar with the problem to show you how to do a series of simple tasks with the UI (that is, have an uninitiated individual try to use your UI for the first time). If they can do it without any hints or clues from you, you're doing it right, go ahead and code the UI. If they can't, you need to rethink your design. Ask them if they have any additional use cases to suggest, too.

In most GUI programs, flow of control looks like this:

code:

read any necessary input files initialise controls, screens and other resources % at this point the program should be ready to start accepting input loop   check for input end loop

[tayl9320]

ok thank you for the imput. Please feel free to make more suggestions, thank you