Richard O'Neill has written a short article on improving user-interface by polishing-up your grids and tables. By making a few simple modifications your information can be easily read and understood.
"It's not hard making interfaces look professional. I've found that some good looking icons and a bit of cell padding makes all the difference.
Using the example below, we can apply small changes to the design which will improve usability and make this ugly interface look a lot better."
A lot of the changes described in the article are debatable but it is still an amazing improvement over your out of the box grid/table. In my own experience, I have found a few easy changes to your tables style can make all the difference.
- Use a solid 1pixel border
- Dull the horizontal lines separating each row
- Use a gradient for the column headings
- Alternate background colors
- Use cell-padding to make sure your data isn't too cluttered.
Icons are a nice touch but can easily be misunderstood for functions they do not actually represent.
Comments
losted on (10.8.08 2:28 am) says