Are there any good documents or websites that show design guidelines for XAML GUIs?

Question

I am looking for some guidelines or standards for XAML GUI design... or even a very good set of examples that show nice GUI that I can use as a starting point.

Over the years I have grown into a very good Battleship Grey Dialog designer, but those are old, and ugly now... and I need to revamp a couple of product GUIs.

I know with XAML I can do a lot more, easily, than I could have done with WInForms.. so it is more dangerous now. I would rather my application blend with latest applications that are done right, rather than stand out like an old WinAMP skin.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The WPF Application Quality Guide has been indispensible for me; here's a link:

http://windowsclient.net/wpf/white-papers/wpf-app-quality-guide.aspx

Edit:

Didn't see that you were referring to visual design; in that case i'd probably be using many of the numerous resources for web design, since the two areas map quite closely.

Answer 2

There are some nice samples http://www.wpftutorial.net

Answer 3

Nice comment w/the WinAmp skin...

I'm not sure if you've come across this resource, but MSFT has put together a pretty comprehensive set of UX guidelines here.

This includes a downloadable PDF, if you're into that sort of leisure reading. While most of the guidelines apply to LOB (Line of Business) applications, you'll find some good information there about what not to do w/WPF (i.e. just because you can doesn't mean you should).

As far as having full-blown showcase GUIs, it's a little light -- it's mostly context-specific screen caps. However, I've found some good example UIs from the patterns libraries that Yahoo offers, and Infragistics has a neat site called Quince which has alot of the same information, but with a Silverlight presentation.

HTH.

Answer 4

One of the sites I love to browse is smashingmagazine.com. It's aimed at web designers, not WPF or Silverlight specifically. But it has many articles that showcase a lot of great ideas for all sorts of things like search boxes, breadcrumb controls, free icon sets, etc.