Developing User Interfaces / Edition 1

by Dan R. Olsen

Overview

In the early days of computing, technicians in white coats controlled refrigerator-sized computers housed in sealed rooms, far from ordinary users. Today, computers are inexpensive commodities, like television sets,
and ordinary people control and interact with them. This new paradigm has led to a burgeoning demand for graphics-intensive and highly interactive interfaces.

Developing User Interfaces is targeted at the programmer who will actually implement, rather than design, the user interface. Most user interface books focus on psychology and usability, not programming techniques. This book recognizes the need for programmers to collaborate with usability experts and psychologists, so topics such as the principles of visualization, human perception, and usability evaluation are touched upon. Yet the primary focus remains on those tools and techniques required for programming the complex user interface.

* Focuses on advanced programming topics

* event handling
* interaction with geometric objects
* widget tool kits
* input syntax

* Useful to programmers using any language—no particular windowing system or tool kit is presumed, examples are drawn from a variety of commercial systems, and code examples are presented in pseudo code

* The basic concepts of traditional computer graphics such as drawing and three-dimensional modeling are covered for readers without a computer graphics background.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558604186
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	01/01/1998
Series:	Interactive Technologies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	414
Product dimensions:	0.89(w) x 7.44(h) x 9.69(d)

About the Author

Dan R. Olsen, Jr. is the director of the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and a professor of computer science at Brigham Young University. Dr. Olsen earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in computer and information science at the

University Pennsylvania in 1981. He is also the author of User Interface Management Systems. Dr. Olsen has considerable expertise in user interface mangement systems (UIMS), computer graphics, and the construction of compiled and interpreted languages

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Designing the Functional Model
Chapter 3 Basic Computer Graphics
Chapter 4 Basics of Event Handling
Chapter 5 Basic Interaction
Chapter 6 Widget Tool Kits
Chapter 7 Interfaces from Widgets
Chapter 8 Input Syntax
Chapter 9 Geometry of Shapes
Chapter 10 Geometric Transformations
Chapter 11 Interacting with Geometry
Chapter 12 Drawing Architectures
Chapter 13 Cut, Copy, and Paste
Chapter 14 Monitoring the Interface: Undo, Groupware, and Macros

Editorial Reviews

This book for readers with a programming background, is intended for those who program the user interface, rather than those who design it. Olsen (computer science, Brigham Young U.) emphasizes task analysis and functional design, discussing them in the context of actual software development. Other topics include interactive devices, drawing architectures, and transformational geometry. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews