>I am trying to determine what the best setup is for an application - we are designing a new framework and want to pick one general look and feel for all apps moving forward.
>We have apps with buttons on the side, menus that pop up (form with list), menus on the top, etc.
>If your users (and you) were starting from scratch, how would you design your application?

We are refactoring our fwk a bit - we are aiming for configurable GUIs like switching from Office97 to OfficeXP or Ribbon-based GUI, perhaps necessitating one app-restart and thereafter remembering the setting on a user/machine basis.

Reason: Remarkable differences in personal preferances coupled with growing screen size differences (netbook 10' vs. office PC with 26' screen). Important rule: all ribbons and toolbars are planned to be able to minimize/hide (see the VfpX Outlook GUI for a nice vfp example). Screens higher than wide might appear as ultramobiles with turned screens or handhelds running a .Net GUI. On a big 26' an outlook toolbar can can have huge bars with a few colour gradients and large icons showing, on a small screen on a weak machine the outlook toolbar might consist of just a vfp-toolbox interface, where a small icon is only shown when minimized, perhaps with different backcolour added for different bars. No slow/visual "gliding" when minimizing or other "optical candy" tricks planned yet, but might be added later (Yuckk). Fast reaction is a feature<g>, especially on Atom-driven machines.

Application progress/page tabs either on left side moving downwards or at top. If mutliple parent/child screens are used, those are docked with tabs showing at the opposite side of pageframe tabs. Our "ribbonlike style" is nice as it can show much info at one glance, but I like it even better if it is hidden away<g>. An iconized toolbar can be put above the basic menu bar - these will always be visible even if the "ribbon" drops down from one of the menu pads instead of a popup-sub-menu hiding those icons "behind" its screen, which is better IMHO.