"Everything is best for something and worst for something else.
The trick is knowing for what, when, for whom, and why."
(Bill Buxton)
The Windows product team released the official Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines as PDF.
The goals for these official Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines (or "UX Guide" for short) are to:
- Establish a high quality and consistency baseline for all Windows-based applications.
- Answer specific user experience questions.
Download the UX Guide in PDF format (35MB).
Even if the guidelines focus on Windows, they are worth a click. As most of you already came across some user demands like "have it like in the explorer ..." ... it could be worth thinking about the basic design principles behind on of the most popular operating systems.
