Web Application Design Patterns

Pawan Vora is the founder and president of Alpha Cube, Inc., a user experience design consultancy focused on designing, reviewing, and evaluating user interfaces for software and web-based applications. He has been a user experience professional for more than 14 years and has designed user interfaces for a range of applications for business-to-consumer, business-to-business, consumer-to-consumer, and business-to-employee environments. He has published and conducted a number of tutorials and in-house training workshops on web site design, web application design, and design patterns in the United States and internationally.Pawan has a Ph.D. and M.S. in industrial engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in addition to his bachelor’s degrees in production engineering and mechanical engineering from Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute in Mumbai, India.

"A generation has watched the internet work its way into every part of society as talented designers and developers have explored new user interfaces and as the most robust design patterns have emerged through the refining fire of hundreds of millions of users. Pawan Vora has done a wonderful service in capturing these best practices in Web Application Design Patterns. This book will be valuable to people ranging from those putting together their first website to those shaping corporate web experiences, and from practitioners to researchers benchmarking existing patterns as new interface paradigms are created." --Arnie Lund, User Experience Director, Microsoft"Web Application Design Patterns is a must read if you are in the business of designing web applications, or simply want to understand the elements of a well-designed web application. Pawan Vora has condensed best practice, along with research and his solid experience, to create a useful reference about designing web applications. Even if you skimmed the book and looked at the designs, it will spark creative design ideas." --David Dick, Technical Writer"Excellent! A very complete and exhaustive overview of patterns for web applications with many previously undocumented patterns. This book is written in very accessible way and will tell you (nearly) everything you need to know when designing web applications. A must-have for any designer!" --Martijn van Welie, Pattern author, Philips Design"This is the type of book you'll want to read with your entire team and a flip chart, because every page will produce a list of actionable changes to the applications you're developing. Pawan Vora has produced an amazing catalogue of the essential patterns for designing today's web-based applications." --Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

• Ch 1. Introduction: 1.1 WEB APPLICATIONS; 1.2 DESIGN PATTERNS; 1.3 ORGANIZATION OF PATTERNS; 1.4 USING PATTERNS IN THIS BOOK Ch 2. Forms: 2.1 CLEAR BENEFITS; 2.2 SHORT FORMS; 2.3 LOGICAL GROUPING; 2.4 LABEL POSITION; 2.5 REQUIRED FIELD INDICATORS; 2.6 SMART DEFAULTS; 2.7 FORGIVING FORMAT; 2.8 KEYBOARD NAVIGATION; 2.9 INPUT HINTS/PROMPTS; 2.10 ACTION BUTTONS; 2.11 INFORMATIVE ERROR MESSAGES Ch 3. Accessing and Exiting Web Applications: 3.1 REGISTER; 3.2 LOG IN; 3.3 LOG OUT; 3.4 AUTOMATIC TIMEOUT; 3.5 FORGOT LOGIN; 3.6 CAPTCHA Ch 4. Application Main page: 4.1 HOME; 4.2 PORTAL; 4.3 DASHBOARD; 4.4 CUSTOMIZATION; 4.5 PERSONALIZATION; 4.6 SKINS Ch 5. Navigating Applications: 5.1 GLOBAL NAVIGATION; 5.2 LOCAL NAVIGATION; 5.3 UTILITY NAVIGATION; 5.4 FACETED NAVIGATION 5.5 WIZARDS; 5.6 TAG CLOUDS; 5.7 BREADCRUMBS Ch 6. Search and Filtering: 6.1 SIMPLE SEARCH; 6.2 PARAMETRIC SEARCH; 6.3 SEARCH RESULTS; 6.4 ADVANCED SEARCH; 6.5 SEARCH TIPS; 6.6 SEARCH PAGINATION; 6.7 CONTINUOUS SCROLLING; 6.8 SAVED SEARCHES; 6.9 SORTING; 6.10 COLUMN FILTERING; 6.11 FILTERING Ch 7. Displaying and Manipulating Data: 7.1 GRIDS; 7.2 THREADED LISTS; 7.3 PAGINATION 7.4 CUSTOM VIEWS; 7.5 REPORTS; 7.6 PRINTER-FRIENDLY; 7.7 DETAILS; 7.8 EDITOR; 7.9 CONFIGURATOR; 7.10 COMPARISONS; 7.11 PROGRESSIVE DISCLOSURE; 7.12 UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD; 7.13 FEEDBACK/RATING; 7.14 CONTROL PANEL; 7.15 CHARTS; 7.16 ALBUM/GALLERY Ch 8. Rich Internet Applications: 8.1 RICH-TEXT EDITOR; 8.2 RICH FORM; 8.3 AUTO-SUGGEST/AUTO-COMPLETION; 8.4 EDIT-IN-PLACE; 8.5 OVERVIEW-PLUS-DETAIL; 8.6 DYNAMIC QUERYING; 8.7 LIVE PREVIEW; 8.8 DRAG-AND-DROP; 8.9 SLIDER; 8.10 ANIMATIONS/TRANSITIONS; 8.11 DELAY/PROGRESS INDICATORS; 8.12 SPOTLIGHT/YELLOW-FADE; 8.13 CAROUSEL Ch 9. Community and Collaboration: 9.1 USER PROFILE/AVATAR; 9.2 SPECIAL INTEREST COMMUNITY; 9.3 MY FRIENDS; 9.4 SHARED NETWORK 9.5 FEEDBACK/RATING; 9.6 RECOMMENDATION; 9.7 DISCOVER NETWORK MEMBERS; 9.8 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; 9.9 SHARING; 9.10 SYNCHRONOUS/ASYNCHRONOUS MESSAGING; 9.11 SHARED SCHEDULE/CALENDAR; 9.12 HISTORY; 9.13 FORUMS; 9.14 BLOGS Ch 10. Internationalization and Localization: 10.1 COUNTRY IDENTIFICATION; 10.2 FORMS; 10.3 LANGUAGE; 10.4 CURRENCY; 10.5 DATE Ch 11. Help: 11.1 INLINE HELP; 11.2 CONTEXTUAL HELP; 11.3 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS; 11.4 APPLICATION HELP; 11.5 HOW TO GUIDES/GUIDED TOURS; 11.6 HELP WIZARDS; 11.7 COMMUNITY HELP Ch 12. Accessibility: 12.1 PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT; 12.2 SEMANTIC STRUCTURE; 12.3 UNOBTRUSIVE STYLE SHEETS; 12.4 UNOBTRUSIVE JAVASCRIPT; 12.5 ACCESSIBLE FORMS; 12.6 ACCESSIBLE IMAGES; 12.7 ACCESSIBLE TABLES; 12.8 ACCESSIBLE NAVIGATION; 12.9 ACCESSIBLE ALTERNATIVE Ch 13. Visual Design: 13.1 LIQUID-WIDTH LAYOUT; 13.2 FIXED-WIDTH LAYOUT; 13.3 PROGRESSIVE LAYOUT; 13.4 GRID STRUCTURE; 13.5 VISUAL HIERARCHY; 13.6 HIGHLIGHT; 13.7 ICONS; 13.8 VISUAL EFFECTS Ch 14. Using Patterns and Pattern Libraries; 14.1 INTERACTION LEVEL AND PAGE LEVEL PATTERNS; 14.2 PATTERN LIBRARIES