This manual contains the user interface (UI) standards followed by the Oracle E-Business Suite development staff for Oracle Forms-based products. It describes the UI for the Oracle E-Business Suite products and how to apply this UI to the design of an application built using Oracle Forms.
This manual is intended for product designers (including user interface engineers), application developers, quality assurance, and usability engineers. Each plays a critical role in ensuring that the application is built to satisfy the end user's requirements.
The companion document to this manual is the Oracle E-Business Suite Developer's Guide. It describes the exact coding practices needed to adhere to these guidelines.
These standards address the development of a UI built using Oracle Forms, and are designed to meet the needs of a trained professional in a business environment. In contrast, the UI standards for Oracle's Self-Service applications are directed at the novice or infrequent user. (See the Oracle Self-Service Applications manuals.) To best serve the professional user, the Oracle E-Business Suite UI seeks to maximize the following aspects of usability:
The application should allow the end user to be more productive than with the prior system they were using. It should assist the user to perform their job by presenting actions and information familiar to the intended user of each screen.
The application must be easy to learn and present a consistent, familiar and predictable UI. Novice users should find clear and obvious methods while experts should be able to increase their efficiency as they learn the more powerful features of the system.
The application should be inviting to use. It should reward a user by providing them the information and tools necessary to complete tasks rapidly, and it should guide them where appropriate with timely and meaningful feedback. The application should allow exploration without the fear of irreversible consequences.
With a few exceptions, all Oracle E-Business Suite products must run in the following environments:
Color Monitor, with greater than 256 colors
Screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 pixels
For information on specific versions of browsers and Java Runtime Environments (JRE), consult the manual Oracle E-Business Suite Installation Guide: Using Rapid Install.
Note that Oracle E-Business Suite does not support a client/server environment; they only operate in an internet configuration.
For ease of use, this book indicates which standards are necessary specifically for translation purposes by including the italicized and bolded word [Translation] at the beginning of the standard. Designers who are creating applications that will not run in other countries can use this indication to identify standards they may choose to ignore for their applications. It may be a good idea, however, to read those standards in case the applications become multilingual in the future.
This book presents standards that must be followed in order to conform to Oracle E-Business Suite specifications, as well as guidelines that have some flexibility. Although the guidelines are not required, adhering to them will usually result in a better user interface.
Throughout this book, each International Standardization Organization (ISO) standard is indicated by a number next to the text describing the standard. When the number (preceded by the letters "OMS", for example, "OMS-00000") is shown next to the text, that text then represents the official standard. When the number appears in parentheses in the course of the text, this indicates a reference to the official standard. To find a particular standard, you may refer to the ISO standards index included in addition to the regular index.
Text that is not labeled as a standard and does not reference a standard is considered a guideline.
Documentation on implementing these standards using Oracle Forms and the libraries provided by Oracle Application Object Library is provided in the Oracle E-Business Suite Developer's Guide. Accordingly, there are frequent references to the Oracle E-Business Suite Developer's Guide throughout this manual.
The Oracle Application Object Library code designed to support these standards assumes that they will be followed without exception. No attempt has been made to analyze the impact of deviations from these standards, therefore Oracle strongly recommends that these standards never be violated if used with Oracle Application Object Library.