Rating: 
Summary: Make your Windows programs better
Review: Developing User Interfaces for Windows should be within reach of every Windows developer who will have some UI developing to do. Along with the Windows User Experience, also from Microsoft Press, this book is an invaluable aid. Each chapter is short and precise, but, avoiding any cliché's, explains the Windows UI and developing for it in great details. The Book is relatively long, but it needs to be in order to cover in detail the task of developing Windows UI applications, which it does well. The book is slightly geared towards 'C' developers, but I am a VB developer and find it easy to convert and 'C' idioms into VB. The book is in a real-world 'hands-on' style. Not too much theory and analysis exists (unlike other books on UI design), which lends it to being excellent both for reading and for reference afterwards. I Highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Quality
Review: I was 100% satisfied with this book. It is clearly written, well organized and filled with many usefull examples of both good and bad designs. It also is very well cross referenced to other user interface design resources on every topic. In particular, it contains comprehensive reviews of other usefull books related to user interface design. I rate this as a must-have quality book.
Rating:
Summary: This book is an excellent resource.
Review: In my opinion, McKay knows what makes a good - and bad - user interface, and through hundreds of design tips, scores of examples, and easy-to-digest text, he tells us. The book consists of five major parts (e.g., "The Basics", "Design Concepts"), each part contains multiple chapters. Each chapter is broken into small sections that emphasizes a particular point of the chapter's topic. For example, the chapter "Establish a Consistent User Interface Style" contains sections such as "Appearance vs. Behavior", "Guideline Goals", and "Create Resource Templates". This approach allows the book to be used as a reference (so that each section can be read independently), although I enjoyed reading it linearly, as that provided good reinforcement when a particular point was mentioned again. The book's emphasis is on Windows programming, but for the most part, it is applicable to most modern UI programming. What makes a good UI is universal, and anyone involved in creating UI's can benefit from reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: This book is an excellent resource.
Review: In my opinion, McKay knows what makes a good - and bad - user interface, and through hundreds of design tips, scores of examples, and easy-to-digest text, he tells us. The book consists of five major parts (e.g., "The Basics", "Design Concepts"), each part contains multiple chapters. Each chapter is broken into small sections that emphasizes a particular point of the chapter's topic. For example, the chapter "Establish a Consistent User Interface Style" contains sections such as "Appearance vs. Behavior", "Guideline Goals", and "Create Resource Templates". This approach allows the book to be used as a reference (so that each section can be read independently), although I enjoyed reading it linearly, as that provided good reinforcement when a particular point was mentioned again. The book's emphasis is on Windows programming, but for the most part, it is applicable to most modern UI programming. What makes a good UI is universal, and anyone involved in creating UI's can benefit from reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good content, shame about the interface
Review: Mr McKay knows his subject and could have written an attractive slim volume. As it is, he has given us a fat ugly one. Ironically, the worst aspect of this book is its UI and for exactly the reasons that the author is at pains to explain. The giant headings are distracting, the over printed chapter numbers, just silly, etc. To compound the irksome UI, the author insists on recycling every sentence he has written over and over again - this undoubtedly bulks out the book, but it does nothing for this user's experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Wind blew
Review: Not to dissent, but this seems more one man's personal manifesto than a guide for making apps conform with existing Windows standards. Did Microsoft Press just farm this book out to some random writer? Not that he doesn't raise the occasional valid point, but if you're looking for Windows standards and practices, be it ui or infrastructure--or if you're looking for the results of solid research as opposed to assertions of opinion--look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: This book has one good chapter
Review: The chapter "Learn from the Web" is *almost* worth the price of the book. It lays out clearly and concisely the differences between web and windows interfaces, and why the web interface is the way it is. The rest of the book, unfortunately, is less informative. It's somewhat painful to read, as the author repeats himself incessantly. That is, he says the same thing over and over. Many times. One has the impression he was paid by the word: each chapter ends with a couple pages of recommended reading, frequently with the same books. The author rambles endlessly about which features he does and does not like about different windows applications. No attempt is made to compare his personal preferences with real user reactions or usability studies. Frequently in order to provide a 'bad' example, he shows how an existing dialog could have been made even worse. No such dialogs exists. It's the old straw-man approach. There are no examples of how an existing dialog might have been made better. In between repeating himself, rambling, referring to other authors and building straw men; the author manages to convey a reasonable collecton of user interface basics. Emphasis on basic. Repeated many times, of course. If you are trying to bring your interface *up to* Windows levels, then this may still be a useful book to you. However, if you consider Windows way behind in the art of the user interface, or if you have any UI experience at all, you will not find further enlightenment here. (Except perhaps the first 4 pages of the Web chapter.)
Rating:
Summary: A great User Interface book, for all levels.
Review: This book is a very interesting read. The author gathers a lot of information from very diverse sources and presents it in a thoughtful and well-ordered manner. This book covers a very wide range, from high-level methodologies to lower-level design advice. The sample User Interface Guidelines were particularily useful to me in getting a leg up on starting to define Guidelines for my organization.
Rating:
Summary: Very Useful and Practical Book
Review: This book is well written and contains a helpful CD with a great set of sample guidelines that acts as a terrific cheat sheet of the book's main points.
Rating:
Summary: Make your Windows programs better
Review: This is by far one of the most interesting and informative books on creating effective user interfaces. It offers real world examples on the "right way" and the "wrong way". My favorite thing about this Microsoft book is that they spare no detail on how each Microsoft product has incorrectly done a user interface. The author then explains how it could have been done better. A great section in the book is on Q&A, giving suggestions on what to look for concerning the UI. As a Windows developer, this book has helped me correct the most subtle of mistakes in my programs. If you want to make a good program better, buy and read this book.
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