Common Desktop Environment Characteristics

The Common Desktop Environment provides a productive and comfortable desktop environment for UNIX users. As you develop your application, keep in mind the experience that the Common Desktop Environment delivers to its users. Develop your application with the following characteristics in mind, to help make it a powerful, consistent, and predictable part of the Common Desktop Environment:

• Hide the complexities of UNIX.

  Because the Common Desktop Environment targets end users as its primary customers, providing an application that hides UNIX as much as possible is a key ingredient to a successful product.

• Provide a common look and feel.

  Successful applications in the Common Desktop Environment share look-and-feel characteristics with other applications on the desktop. Follow the style and other guidelines (such as the Common Desktop Environment standard font names) so that your application encompasses the Common Desktop Environment Motif look and feel.

• Make applications easy to use.

  Provide an easily readable default font size, and provide keyboard accelerators for mouse-oriented actions. Use the desktop online help component to integrate a complete Help system into your application. Basic computer interaction styles should be consistent across platforms wherever possible.

• Take advantage of desktop integration services.

  The Common Desktop Environment provides a set of desktop integration services that enable applications to be well-integrated into the desktop. Users benefit because they do not have to know whether an application is running on a local machine or somewhere on the network, or which toolkit (if any) was used to write the application they are running. Provide mechanisms in your application that enable it to be launched from the desktop and to communicate with other Common Desktop Environment applications. Use the online Help system to provide users with quick information. Use drag and drop to provide users with a more predictable way to use their systems.

• Design for individual and cultural differences.

  By following the Common Desktop Environment conventions and policies, your application will naturally provide for smooth, consistent, and appropriate customization of:

  • Fonts

  • Color

  • Keyboard and mouse bindings

  • Locale-specific configuration files

  For more about locale-specific configuration files, see the localization section of the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide.