Designing the Graphical User Interface › Guidelines for Window and Dialog Box Design › Visual Cues › Designed Visual Cues

Designed Visual Cues

The following list explains guidelines for designed visual cues:

• Have the current status of the application (for example: current customer name, or number of units of a product in stock, fact that the user is currently creating an order) continually updated at the bottom of the window.
• Distinguish different windows and parts of a single window by applying color and font differences or by including a picture.
• Disable buttons and menu items. They will be grayed out to show that they are unavailable at this moment.
• Enable the application to give the user visual feedback as actions are carried out.

  For example, icons are highlighted as they are selected, the mouse pointer may change shape as it moves over different areas of the screen, and so on.

More information:

Fonts and Colors on Windows and Dialog Boxes