Is there a gallery of great application UI's that can be used for ideas?

Question

I'm looking for websites that showcase screenshots of applications with exceptional UI design. I'm writing an application and am taking my time considering what the UI should look like. My audience is not business but family.

My previous UI-design experience (and comfort) is with Windows Forms so I would typically use standard list boxes, buttons, tabs, etc. Now I'm experimenting with WPF and was looking at more...attractive...interfaces (as long as it still meets the needs of the application and enhances - not detracts - from its purpose).

Any thoughts of galleries or specific examples of applications with great UI design?

EDIT: I'll also take individual application's that you feel make a great, intuitive design.

Answer 1

For web, check this link:

http://designingwebinterfaces.com/designing-web-interfaces-12-screen-patterns

For windows forms, there is no such site (at least to my knowledge). What I do is to mimic the behavior of the applications I like (e.g. docking panels in Visual studio, some other GUI in Office and so on.

Media players (e.g. DVD or audio players) also have some really cool looking Gui so you can download a couple of demos from different vendors and checkout their GUI.

Last example is to go to sites like www.codeguru.com or www.codeproject.com and checkout the winforms/ MFC sections there. They have some really cool custom controls stuff.

Answer 2

I found the following site which has some cool stuff for WPF:

http://windowsclient.net/community/showcase.aspx

Answer 3

It's not a gallery, but Joel Spolsky wrote a great book on User Interface Design for Programmers.