CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsuser-experiencetaskbarnotification-area
Evgenyt
Evgenyt

Reputation: 10721

Which dialog spacing conforms to Windows UI/UX guidelines?

We are implementing a Windows 7 application that displays a pop-up in the taskbar's notification area.

There are two version of the simple form.

v1

and the compact version:

v2

Which one is closer to Windows's UI guidelines? Is there a good reason to prefer one over the other?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 471

Answers (1)

Cody Gray
Cody Gray

Reputation: 244782

The second one looks better to me. It's hard to put my finger on the exact difference between them, but it looks like there's more horizontal padding between the borders on the first one.

That's not consistent with the standard UI or the sample pictures in Microsoft's handy UI documentation/guidebook.

For example, there's very little horizontal (or vertical) padding in these two notification area pop-ups:

                                 

The standard border padding for windows (according to Microsoft's UX guidelines) is 7 DLUs (about 12 pixels) all the way around. When in doubt, I suggest using that.

Beyond the UI/UX guidelines, it's also important to consider functionality. A pop-up window should not take up the entire screen, so using space as parsimoniously as possible is always a good idea. Since the extra padding doesn't really add anything to or make your dialog more usable, it's superfluous.

Upvotes: 4

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