JavaTM Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics > Part I: General Topics > 1: Introduction

1: Introduction

An application's usability depends on its appearance and behavior--its look and feel. A consistent look and feel helps users learn an application faster and use it more efficiently. In addition, a consistent look and feel helps users learn other applications that share that look and feel.

This book provides guidelines for designing applications with the Java look and feel. All the guidelines are intended to help you create a well-designed application.

Well-designed applications have the following characteristics:

• Logical organization
• Scalability
• Predictability
• Responsiveness
• Efficiency

The rest of this chapter describes each of these characteristics, why each is important, and which parts of this book relate to each characteristic.

Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics. Copyright 2001. Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.