iPhone Human Interface Guidelines

You’ll need a (free) ADC account to access it, but part of today’s bonanza of iPhone SDK-related documentation is the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines. (Not to be confused with the previous “shit sandwich” version here.) I haven’t had time to do much more than skim, but it seems very well thought-out and organized. A snippet:

Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.

Update: Also worth noting is that the HIG’s name for the OS is “iPhone OS”. Seems wrong to use “iPhone” in the name, considering it runs on the iPod Touch, too. I’d have gone with “Mobile OS X” or “OS X Touch”.

★ Friday, 7 March 2008