Progress
Portability Guide
Defining Your Design Goals
Each platform requires a different design to be most effective. Therefore, it is important to define strong design goals, then resolve any competition between the goals.
The same application might have to run on different platforms. For example, a factory might need to run the same application on each of the various kinds of workstations on the factory floor. In this case, the priority is consistency across platforms. By contrast, if you sell your application to different customers, and each customer uses only one kind of workstation, the priority is the application’s native look and feel.
When defining your design goals, consider the following:
- Whether your application must be fully functional across displays
- Whether the same interface design is essential across all platforms
- Whether interface features are easy to incorporate and are efficient to use across all platforms
- The needs and expectations of your customers
- The technology your application uses. Know the capabilities and standards of your platforms. Sometimes they contradict each other. For example, character applications, by their nature, require a different approach than graphical applications. Consider these platform restrictions and standards, and whether your application must conform to them.
- Language and cultural differences and how they might affect your application. For each internationalization issue, determine the best solution on each platform.
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