Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts

by Ian Horrocks

Behind most non-trivial user interface screens lie complex webs of code that many practitioners in the software industry find difficult to control. Despite the obvious power and sophistication of user interface development tools, the majority of user interface software is difficult to understand because it is coded without an overall design. In this book, Ian Horrocks presents a proven technique for designing event-driven software using the UCM architecture and the statechart notation. The statechart approach to constructing user interface software results in code that can be: * written quickly and easily,
* tested using white box techniques,
* repeatedly enhanced over the lifetime of a system,
* modified with a minimal risk of introducing unwanted side-effects,
* regression tested without the need for full re-tests. This book provides a practical guide to constructing real user interfaces for real projects. It is primarily written for practising software engineers, but will also be invaluable to students wishing to gain an insight into user interface construction.

Genres: Design

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 1999

Reviews

[Henrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

It ain’t long, but it doesn’t waste time either. The book introduces the concepts of statecharts for designing the implementation of user interfaces. The terminology/notation is well explained and several, quite convincing, examples are presented.

This book is aimed at a practitioner and is meant to give tools for using statecharts in real situations and I think it achieves this rather way. However, I’d say that the expectations of how modern user interfaces behave a changed since this book was written – but that is not a flaw of the book.

The fact that there are both a structured introduction of statechart notation and detailed, real implementations is absolutely fantastic. The book ends with a discussion on implementation and testing.

[Luis Phan]

Good