Snap-in Start Pages: Visual Design 

This topic presents all the visual design parameters of the Microsoft Management Console snap-in start pages.

Resizing

The start page content will not resize below the standard minimum size of the default results pane (see Console Sizing). Instead, vertical and horizontal scroll bars will appear in the results pane when the MMC is resized down.

The start page must resize up from the default results pane dimensions. This will allow users to expand controls on the start page so that they can see more data. When the start page is resized up, sentences and paragraphs will wrap. The text in the links will wrap until they are a single row. The link columns will expand proportionately and the links will stay left justified.

The scrollbars will scroll the entire start page. In other words, there should be only one set of scrollbars for the entire start page.

Figure 1 Diagrams showing how the content area changes during resizing.

Overview of the Start Page Design

The following is an example of a standard layout for the start page. The start page consists of a header section and hierarchical sections that list activity groups.

Figure 2 An illustration of a standard start page.

Expanding section headers

Users click the headings to expand or collapse the sections. There can be multiple levels of headings, but to improve readability and usability try to use only two levels of headings. Each level should be indented from the level above.

The triangle points up when the section is expanded and down when the section is collapsed. The arrows indicated to the user what will happen when the header is clicked.

The header sections also have a roll-over behavior to indicate that they are clickable, as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3 An illustration of how the header sections changes on rollover.

Start page layout

Use the information in Figures 4, 5, and 6 to lay out the page in a standard manner. Note that layout guidance for one-, two-, and three-column layouts is shown at the bottom of Figure 6. These column layouts should be used to display summary or status information.

Figure 4 Detailed layout information for the start page header section.

Figure 5 Detailed layout information for the start page section headers.

Figure 6 Detailed layout information for section content.

Link Layout

Figure 7 shows some examples of layout combinations of Action, Navigation, and Resource links. In general, put the Action links first, followed by the Navigation links, and then the Resource links.

Figure 7 Examples of how to lay out different combinations of links.