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Subject:RE: GUI names: forms vs. windows From:"Lydia Wong" <lydiaw -at- fpoint -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:52:30 -0400
Mark Baker asked:
<snip>
> We're currently reviewing/updating our in-house style guide and would like
> to know how others have answered the "Are these called forms, windows, or
> something else?" question, as in "Click OK to open the XYZ form/window."
</snip>
We do use a style guide, of sorts. We document tools for creating Windows
interfaces. Our audience is Windows developers. So they expect us to use
Windows terms. The style guide we use is the MS Windows interface guidelines
(most currently documented in "Microsoft Windows User Experience: Official
Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers").
Of course, this is really beyond a style guide. It's the rules our users are
supposed to use when creating interfaces using our products. So this has a
good bit of clout when a developer says "why are you calling a thingamabob a
widget?" They know this book, and they know that they and our users are
supposed to follow it, so it makes sense to them when we say we follow it,
too. We also pay attention to the Microsoft Manual of Style, because it
covers some of the same ground, but it's oriented toward writing about
interfaces, not designing them.
So, like so many answers on the list, it depends on your audience. Are they
exclusively Windows folks (or Linux or Mac or . . . )? Will they therefore
expect certain terms to be used in certain ways? If so, then use the terms
they expect to see. If you have a diverse audience, perhaps choose the
largest audience and use their terms (and yes, be consistent).
Maybe this isn't what you want to hear, but HTH.
Lydia
__________________
Lydia Wong
Technical Writer
FarPoint Technologies, Inc.
www.fpoint.com
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