Further Reading

The books and articles listed below are a few suggestions for reading material relevant to Visual Basic programming and interface design. They are only recommendations and the list is not exhaustive.
Books
Visual Basic:
- Beginning Visual Basic 5
by Peter Wright (1997), Wrox Press Ltd, 784 pages.
- Programming in Visual Basic 5
by Bradley, J.C. and Millspaugh, A.C. (1998) McGraw-Hill, 588 pages.
HCI:
- Human-Computer Interaction
by Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., Benyon, D., Holland, S. and Carey, T. (1994) Addison-Wesley, 773 pages.
- Human-Computer Interaction
by Dix, A., Finlay, J., Abowd, G. and Beale, R. (1993) Prentice Hall.
- The Psychology of Everyday Things
by Norman, D.A. (1988) 257 pages.
A facinating look at the design problems of many everyday items. Very relevant for anyone involved in designing online artefacts.
- Usability Engineering
by Nielsen, J. (1993) Academic Press Limited.
A comprehesive book covering a wide variety of usability evaluation techniques and how these fit into the development life-cycle.
Design:
- Multimedia Graphics
W. Velthoven and J. Seijdel (Eds.) (1996) BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 188 pages.
Mainly a visual ideas book showing hundreds of screen shots from multimedia CD and web systems.
- The Non-Designers Design Book
by Robin Williams (1994) Peachpit Press.
Although written for DTP designers, this book still illustrates many good design principles which can be used within Visual Basic or any other online development environment.
Articles
- Exploring Color in Interface Design
by Shubin, Falck & Johansen (1996) Interactions, July/August, p 37-48.
- Future Directions for Human-Computer Interaction
by Shneiderman, B. (1989) Proc. Human-Computer Interaction 89 (Boston, Sept. 18-22)
Postscript version of paper available at: http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/Research/tech-report-list.html#1989
- Future Interfaces
by David Tebbutt (1997) PC Pro, Iss. 36 (October), p 228-234.
- Noncommand User Interfaces
by Nielsen J. (1993) Communications of the ACM, Vol. 36, No. 4, p 83-99.
- Personal Computer World magazine
PCW occasionally has Visual Basic workshops (Feb & Mar 97), it also regularly has a Hands On section which covers Visual Programming in general. This section frequently covers Visual Basic and Delphi languages.
- Solutioneering in user interface design
by Thimbleby, H. (1993) Behaviour & Information Technology, Vol. 12, No. 3, p 190-193.
- The Case Against User Interface Consistency
by Grudin, J. (1989) Communications of the ACM, Vol. 32, No. 10, p 1164-1173.
Although consistency is often seen as a primary goal of good interface design, this article shows that maximising consistency is not always the best approach.
- Top Ten Blunders by Visual Designers
by Horton, W. (1995) Computer Graphics, Vol. 29, No. 4, p 20-24.
A short but very practical article about visual design. Topics covered include: use of colours, fonts, symbols, and simplifying graphics.
Booksellers
Amazon (UK site)
Internet Book Shop (IBS)
James Thin
Waterstones
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