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User Interface Style Guide

The Amiga User Interface Style Guide provides an introduction to, and in-depth explanation of, the issues programmers must understand to create the best user interface for Amiga applications. The guide includes:

the design principles and metaphors underlying Intuition, the Amiga's graphical user interface;

guidelines for programs that use the Amiga's high-performance ARexx and Shell interfaces;

detailed specifications on how to arrange the elements of the Amiga's user interface to make applications consistent, powerful, and easy to use.

For the serious programmer who wants to take full advantage of the Amiga's impressive capabilities, the Amiga User Interface Style Guide is the definitive source of information on designing the front end to Amiga applications.

Preface

Like any written work with a distribution wider than a personal letter, this style guide attempts to be many things to many readers.

After much deliberation we developed the following profiles of the average reader: a current Amiga developer working alone or with one partner; a developer from another platform who would like to develop for the Amiga; a first-time developer; a graphic artist designing a user interace for a developer; a team of developers working for a medium-sized company...the list goes on.

So our intention was to write a manual that introduced the Amiga from basics - in terms a non-technical reader could understand. The GUI sections were especially targeted for the layman. Other sections, such as the ARexx article, were structured more like reference guides since they will likely be used by readers with more of a technical background.