Delphi Logo Applications

For an application to carry the "Designed for Windows xx" certification and logo (image), it must meet certain standards.

In my opinion, some of these are good (a given icon means the same thing in all applications) and some are bad (all configuration data must be stored in the registery).

Unfortunately, the standards vary depending on the operating system you want your software to run on.

Win95/98 Logo Application | Windows 98 vs XP | dotNet | References

Win95/98 Logo Application

From the Delphi 5 menu, select File / New... / Projects / Win95/98 Logo Application

Provides menus

File - New Open Save SaveAs Send Exit
Edit - Cut Copy Paste
Help - About

Seven toolbar buttons, actions

On my system, the files for this are located at

C:\Program Files\BORLAND\Delphi5\Objrepos\Logoapp

Included Icons

This project provides 16 icons (bitmaps) in an ImageList, but only a few are used.

Cut Copy Paste Delete Undo Redo
New Open Save Print PrintPreview
FileSend (email/envelope)
Find Replace (magnifying glass, should be binoculars)
Help - What's This?
Properties (a finger pointing to a property list)

There is no documentation, but I am assuming that most of these are the icons distributed with the Windows 98 SDK ... which is no longer available.

Actions

This example contains several File actions. Normally, the associated menu options would not be enabled unless the HandlesTarget method returned True. However, in this case, the menu options are enabled because the OnExecute property is set. (This feature is not documented in the Delphi help.)

Windows 98 vs XP

One of the points of user interface standards is to make it easier for the users to use the system. As a result, toolbar icons are standardized so that the user will immediately associate an action with an image.

However, Microsoft changed the suggested user interface icons for Windows XP. As a result, users must learn a completely new set of images. In my opinion, this is a very user hostile thing to do. (On the other hand, if the user interface wasn't visually different, most users would never see a reason to spend >$500 to "upgrade" their operating system and office products.)

Below are some of the differences with respect to 95/98.

98	XP
16 colors	16-bit and 32-bit colors
2 sizes	3 sizes
Flat, front view	Perspective, 3D look
Square corners	Rounded corners
You can use screen capture software to get icons	Icons must now be drawn from scratch since a mask is now needed
rtf-based help files	html-based help files

From these differences, it should be obvious that applications designed to the new XP standards will not be able to run under older operating systems.

dotNet

Well, dotNet has its own logo standards. The most important change is that configuration data is now stored in *.ini files instead of the registry.

Help files are now based on compiled html.

References

Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers
- Menus provides details of the standard File and Edit menus.
- Design of Graphic Images provides 36 Common Toolbar Buttons in black and white. Suggests a magnifying glass for search and replace instead of the binoculars.
- Keyboard Interface Summary contains the standard shortcuts related to common menu selections.
Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design (google search, the text is no longer on-line) - this is the primary book for designing Windows 95 user interfaces. As of 4-14-2002, I was not able to find this, or any other documentation on the Windows 95/98 Logo standards, on the Microsoft web site.
User Interface - this provides a complete on-line manual for XP standards.
Windows XP logo - Design to this to guarantee that your application won't run in earlier versions of Windows.
The User Interface Guidelines for Microsoft Windows is an MFC API guide, not a style guide. However, it does suggest using "The Windows Interface: An Application Design Guide" which must be purchased (I could not find it on-line).
You can download Windows XP Visual Guidelines and run it locally (it's just a few web pages). New fonts include Franklin Gothic and Trebuchet MS. There are step-by-step instructions on making icons (with drop shadows). Buttons are no longer grey - they use colors to convey meaning/importance.
This new interface is Fresh, Desirable, Colorful, Engaging. (what a bunch of ...)

Author: Robert Clemenzi - clemenzi@cpcug.org