• What makes an interface design aesthetically pleasing?
• What is a useful and interesting way to present information?
• What is good practice regarding form/data input?
• What works (and what does not) regarding visual clues, feedback and help?
• What role do standards play, if any, in interface design?

Given that this book did not help me, a developer with a number of years' experience with different products such as Visual Basic (VB), who will it help? Any novice who wants to understand what the interface elements of Windows 95 are. For that audience the book presents all of the interface features of Windows 95 and NT that are used, such as windows, menus, toolbars, tooltips, popup menus, splitter bars, online help, wizards and so on. If that list does not make sense to you then the book has value as a simple and straightforward description of those (and similar) elements.

There were chapters in there that I would not expect to see, such as the one on prototyping, which was actually little more than a description of the VB development environment. Overall, I would expect that for the majority of C/C++ developers in ACCU this book is too basic and does not address the real substance of what is needed, I certainly felt disappointed.