Tools User Interface Styleguide

Involved: 2003 - 2004

NetBeans is the tools platform Sun uses to build all of its developer tools. At the moment there are four developer products built on top of NetBeans: Java Creator for drag and drop web application development; Java Studio Enterprise for multi-tier J2EE development; NetBeans Java IDE targeted at mass market Java development; and Sun's native language IDE for traditional C/C++ and Fortran development on Solaris. Each of these products represents a large functional space and providing a styleguide to keep them aligned and consistent was imperative to their success.

In 2004 NetBeans underwent a significant update. In preparation for the update I was asked to review the existing styleguide to scope where and how it would need to be edited to keep all of the products in harmony. After an initial month of review it became clear that the number of changes to NetBeans as it approached its 4.0 release were significant and would warrant a complete rewrite of the styleguide.

I worked with the numerous development teams across Sun's developer products to capture best practices for a vast range of functionality and to review the rules that would be enshrined in the styleguide. The styleguide was completed in June of 2004.

Along with the styleguide I developed and deployed a Flash application that would help designers and developers review their UI against the styleguide. This was in response to new processes of UI review that were being introduced with the release of the styleguide.

Screenshots

The Tools User Interface Styleguide was completed both for print and web.

The styleguide review application provides a simple mechanism to review UI against the styleguide and generate a report that highlights any guideline violations. The application was developed in Actionscript.

© Christopher Alexis Le Dantec 2004-2008
Masthead image derived from: Stairs In Memory © Severin Koller for openphoto.net CC:Attribution