User's Manual

18
Menus
All commands available should also be made available by menu.
As much as possible all menus should have shortcut keys and or mnemonic associated with them. If a menu shares
functionality with a button is should share the same label.
Status Bar
Small bar at the bottom used to convey information to the user. The status bar should be used before a dialog box if
at all possible. Error messages should be in Red. Successful completion should be indicated with black. For
implementation use
com.innovatec.ui.StatusBar
.
Organizing
Group Boxes
Used to group like concepts. Group boxes should used sparingly and group boxes within group boxes should
be avoided, they can become confusing very fast and add very little to the organization of the screen.
Instead of Group boxes consider having titles for areas, labels that extend slightly more left than the rest.
Tabbed Panes
Tabbed panes are the preferred method of breaking large hunks of data that are only tied together by a
process.