Saturday, April 28, 2007
About cube controls for WPF
Telerik has announced their Cube demo...
I know that with WPF the designers can free their minds, but... came on! I don't want to push the faces of the cube with my mouse! This kind of crazy-graphic-designer-made controls are only giving more arguments to Jacob Nielsen against the 3D (see 2D is Better Than 3D and Top 10 Bloopers for two examples, or look for "3D" in UseIt.com if you want more).
Some time ago, last year, while searching for early WPF controls, I found this cube calendar (Selector3D) made by Ricciolo. I didn't want to be less, so, I developed a control for Himalia using this free cube control. Now, is time to show it.
The control works like a 3D tab, just this, when you press the links the content moves in a cube-like to show the next content, but it's SO COOL when you play with the back and forward buttons! I must confess that I spent like 20 minutes just going forward and backwards the first time I ran it ;)
Believe me, you can't stop of pressing Back and Forward. And that goes even worst, when you notice that got all this stuff with just one drag & drop in the designer, and that it's full reusable, and...
Just in case, the Navigation and Layout models for this example are the following:
The container control is the "red hollow rectangle" in the navigation model, and it means that all the elements within it will be presented using one only control. In this case, we selected the Cube control to do this task. Obviously, the control should know how to present that navigational path, but it is defined in its contract.
But don't be anxious, we will include this control in the next release...
Labels: Controls, Himalia, Usability, WPF
Friday, April 27, 2007
Himalia will probably be presented in Seoul on September
I made an abstract submission for the First International Workshop in Model-Driven User-Centric Design & Engineering that will take place in Seoul/Korea on September 4-5, this year.
My submission was accepted. Now, I have to make it happen. That means: to complete the final paper and figure out how to go to the other side of the world ;)
If you will be in the zone, please let me know, it will be great to met there.
Labels: Conference, Himalia, MDUCDE
Monday, April 16, 2007
Himalia - User Interface Builder
When someone ask me the typical "what are you doing?" question I have two possible responses.
I'm doing a software product for software developers, you won't understand.
This is the typical answer to my father, my sister and my girlfriend (my mother doesn't ask me, she already knows I'm playing with the computer). But it works, and nobody keep asking and it is the idea ;)
On the other hand, for the computer guys my answer has changed in the last year.
At the beginning, I defined Himalia as a language for service-oriented user interfaces. It's still the definition you can see in the index page of the website. But it had a problem: nobody knew what it was and they used to say something like: "aaahh". Nobody has ever asked me a second question, but it wasn't the idea here ;)
Then, Andrés Aguiar, defined it as a model-driven tool for user interfaces.
The first time I read it I found it simplified, but then... I understood. You can't say everything in the first sentence, and really you don't want to do it. When you try, you loose the chance to get the people interested. Although this definition doesn't define the technology and focuses only in the tool (Himalia Guilder), it's a very good introduction that everybody understand.
But now, my new answer is that Himalia is a user interface builder, that is the guilder definition after all. Why? I don't want to carry on the Himalia's shoulders all the problems of the model-driven tools' history. Himalia wasn't made just for modeling, it was made for modeling and running a user interface; for the specification time, the design time but also for the runtime. We want something else that writing down the models in a paper and admire them, that is the purpose of most of the formal modeling languages. So, this definition make sense for the real Himalia goal: to build user interfaces. Simple.
Keep it in mind, Himalia is a user interface builder, and more, Himalia is the user interface builder, until someone copy us.
Monday, April 09, 2007
The Car I Want
I love this car. Although I haven't driven it, I love the concept: "electric cars that people wants to drive".
Despite the fact I am not sure if human being should drive cars (car crashes produce 1.2 million dead every year, are the first dead cause for young people in the rich countries, etc.), I must agree that it is the best way I know to start with environment-friendly technologies in the car market. I strongly believe that in this century we should move from driving CO2 cars to habiting ambient-friendly car-like transporters. Well, the Tesla way is a good first step in the right direction.
Tesla Motors is a Silicon Valley start-up company that shares the software start-up spirit, for example, you can find Jeffrey Skoll, Larry Page and Sergei Brin among their investors.
They are targeting the sport high-end market with this Tesla Roadster (these kind of people are the only who can buy 100,000usd toys). As a second step, they will learn about their technology and provide a family sport car in a wider but still high-end market. In the long term, they will provide the "usual" car-company offer. They are also changing the standard distribution channel for cars: they will provide specialized end-user Tesla Shops. They can make this because their actual customers aren't worried about the price/feature trade-off, they are just looking for a new toy. I think this can only be a short/middle term strategy in order to encourage the Tesla brand value.
I really like their strategy, do you think it is a blue-ocean one? I think so.
Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with user interfaces... are you sure? really? Ok, you are right ;)
Labels: Frinedly Cars, Technology, UX
