Wednesday November 6th, 2013 by Heiko Tietze

Following the Universal Model of a User Interface we group all guidelines concerning controls within three, user-centered sections:

controls that are used for viewing and navigation, controls that user apply to edit and manipulate content, and controls for help and assistance.



We started with the simple Editing and Manipulation section and have now continued with…

Viewing and Navigation

It consists of the following guidelines:

Access functions

Apply a menu bar to every standard application.

Try to omit the status bar from your application.

Provide a context menu for controls with implicit functions.

Provide a toolbar for frequently used functions.

Use a push button to initiate an action when the user clicks it.

Use a toogle button to indicate a state, preferably in toolbars only.

Use a command link to navigate between pages.

Support keyboard access by accelerators and shortcuts.

Follow the guidelines for dialogs for secondary windows.

Grouping

Arrange associated controls by using a labeled group box or an unlabeled frame.

Allow users to re-size aligned groups by placing a splitter between the groups.

Use tabs to show related information on separate pages.

Provide an accordion (aka tool box) for different views to content.

Complex views

Use a list view to show some items out of one category.

Use a tree view to show items with a single, natural, hierarchical categorization.

If you really need to create your own widget follow the guidelines for custom controls.

Participate

We explicitly ask about your opinion. So please make use of the comments section. Please read the guidelines carefully and make sure that the text is informative and complies with your requirements. The content should be both generic and comprehensive and intends to make KDE awesome. But we are also interested in support. If you are able to create nice sample UIs with Qt please contact the usability team via the kde-guidelines mailinglist.