Chapter 5

Software Tools and Practice

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Specification Methods
• Design requires a good notation to record and discuss
alternate possibilities:
– The default language for specifications in any field is natural
language, e.g., English
– Communication medium, e.g., sketchpad, or blackboard
• Natural-language specifications tend to be:
– lengthy
– vague
– ambiguous
• Therefore often are difficult to prove:
– correct
– consistent
– complete

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Specification Methods (cont.)
• Functional Specifications
– Multi-part documents
• What the software does (often bullet lists)
• Sometimes, what the software does not do
• External behavior (UI descriptions)
– Often done in conjunction with a separate
internal design document
– These specs are a ‘contract’ between
engineering and sales/marketing

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Specification Methods (cont.)
• Transition Diagram
– a set of nodes that represents system states and a set
of links between the nodes that represents possible
transitions

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Specification Methods (cont.)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Specification Methods (cont.)
• State Charts

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools
Features of Interface-Building Tools.

• User Interface Independence

– Separate interface design from internals
– Enable multiple user interface strategies
– Enable multiple platform support
– Establish user interface architect role
– Enforce standards

• Methodology & Notation

– Develop design procedures
– Find ways to talk about design
– Create project management

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• Rapid Prototyping
– Try out ideas very early
– Test, revise, test, revise,...
– Engage end users, managers, and others

• Software Support
– Increase productivity
– Offer some constraint & consistency checks
– Facilitate team approaches
– Ease maintenance

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
User interface mockup tools

• Examples
– Paper and pencil
– Word processors
– Slide-show software
– Macromedia Director, Flash MX, or Dreamweaver

• Visual Editing
– Microsoft Visual Studio
– Borland JBuilder

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• Flash MX

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• Visual Basic .NET, from Microsoft

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• JBuilder for Java

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• BX Pro from ICS, for Motif

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• Qt Designer, from Trolltech, for C++ / Qt

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• Finding the right tool is a tradeoff between
six main criteria:

1. Part of the application built using the tool.

2. Learning time
3. Building time
4. Methodology: imposed or advised
5. Communication with other subsystems
6. Extensibility and modularity

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• The windowing system layer
– Sometimes working at a low-level is required.
• E.g., new platform
– The while(true) main loop

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• The GUI toolkit layer
– Widgets, such as windows, scroll bars, pull-down or
pop-up menu, etc.
– Non-trivial to work with without an interface builder
– LOTS of different options here
• X Windows / Motif
• Cross platform toolkits: ILOG, Qt
• Java: AWT, Swing, SWT
• .NET

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)
• The application framework and specialized language layer
– Application frameworks are based on object-oriented
programming
– Can quickly build sophisticated interfaces
– Require intensive learning
– Specialized language (scripts) layers lighten the
programming burden
– Tcl (and its toolkit Tk)
– Perl/Tk
– Python/Tk
– Visual Basic
– Java Script
– Qt Script for Applications (QSA)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Interface-Building Tools (cont.)

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Evaluation and Critiquing Tools
Tullis' Display Analysis Program, Version 4.0:
• Takes alphanumeric screen designs and
produces display-complexity metrics plus
some advice:
– Upper-case letters: 77% The percentage of upper-
case letters is high.
• Consider using more lower-case letters, since text printed
in normal upper- and lower-case letters is read about 13%
faster than text in all upper case. Reserve all upper-case
for items that need to attract attention.

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Evaluation and Critiquing Tools
(cont.)
– Maximum local density = 89.9% at row 9, column 8.
Average local density = 67.0%
• The area with the highest local density is identified...you can
reduce local density by distributing the characters as evenly
as feasible over the entire screen.
– Total layout complexity = 8.02 bits
Layout complexity is high.
• This means that the display items (labels and data) are not
well aligned with each other...Horizontal complexity can be
reduced by starting items in fewer different columns on the
screen (that is, by aligning them vertically).

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.

 Evaluation and Critiquing Tools
(cont.)
• Doctor HTML - Web Page Analyzer:
• http://imagiware.com/RxHTML
– Did not find the required open and close HEAD tag.
You should open and close the HEAD tag in order to
get consistent performance on all browsers.
– Found extra close STRONG tags in the document.
Please remove them.
• GUIs That Suck note: Where are the tags???

Copyright © 2005, Pearson Education, Inc.