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[Based on the strong comment below (dated April 7 and 8, 2010) from when I originally posted this question, I took a hard look at what I wrote and asked myself "Huh? What am I really after here?" I decided drastic action was called for: discard the original text, make the question simpler and cleaner, and focus on what I really want to get out of it. So here is the new, May 3, 2010 version of the question]

Everybody "knows" what constitutes a clean, robust, easy-to-use WinForm application. But what, exactly? Here is my starter list. You may not agree with all of these (some folks, for example, really dislike a tip of the day), which is fine, but it gives you the general idea.

  • "About" dialog
  • Tooltips
  • Splash screen
  • Tip of the day
  • Checking for updates
  • Persisting settings across invocations
  • Progress indicator for long operations

What else would you include?

Michael Sorens
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Usability is far more than what you talk about above.

For example, a component set in .NET for WebForm may be usable to a particular type of user and not another based on any number of human factors influencing user performance.

Usability is about understanding your user and their context of use to optimise your system's design to maximise your users' performance.

The above is very narrow in scope from a usability perspective. Maybe if you tell us something about the type of user the above works for it would be more relevant. Also, you best be able to back up your points above as usability is measurable and you don't want to be advocating guidelines for the developer community to implement that are not valid.

But it is good you are interested in usability. So please keep exploring this area

Forer
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