April 17, 2012
January 25, 2012
What it means to develop Metro Applications for Windows 8
I have been coming across a lot of confusion regarding development of Windows 8 Metro style application. Will try to clear out some of the confusion in the air.
What is Metro about it?
Metro Applications follow the design principles of Metro like content before chrome, focus on typography, fast and fluid, alive in motion etc. Focus of metro application is on the content that needs to be displayed .Hence all menus, taskbar and other unnecessary controls have moved to the app bar or charms . Charms can be considered to be a system level menu that is used to perform common applications like Search\Share etc. across Metro Applications. There is a lot of emphasis on fonts, scale and weight in the Metro design. Microsoft has come up with Seago UI font for developing Metro applications. Metro UI relies on usage of tiles that are alive with notifications and animations. New controls provided with XAML and WinJS are already designed according to the Metro design principles. Hence when you use Expression Blend\Visual Studio 2011 etc. and use the controls as per the technologies selected(XAML\HTML), your application gets a Metro look automatically.
Continue reading "What it means to develop Metro Applications for Windows 8 " »
January 9, 2012
Understanding lifecycle of Windows 8 apps
One major differentiating factor for Metro applications on Windows 8 is that the application lifetime would be managed by the OS. To the end user, this would mean that they would be unable to close applications using a close button. This has also been discussed here .
Let us now understand how the OS handles the application lifetime and what are the implying considerations for Windows 8 development. An application can be in one of the 3 states - Running, Suspended and Terminated. When an application is brought in the foreground, it becomes a running application. If second application is launched, the first one moves to the suspended state after a short delay. Again, if a third application is launched, both first and second applications move to the suspended state. This repeats until the system becomes low on memory. When the system becomes low on memory, the applications consuming maximum memory is terminated. Applications can also get terminated due to system shutdown, application crash or if the user terminates it from the task manager.
Continue reading "Understanding lifecycle of Windows 8 apps" »
December 26, 2011
Immersive Experiences with Microsoft Technologies
In Immersive Technologies Track we are working on some exciting technologies related to data visualization, touch, gesture and augmented reality. The main products on our radar are Phone 7, Surface and Kinect. We recently published a technology roundtable newletter sharing some insights of our work. You can get to the newsletter from here.
Comments are welcome.
May 30, 2011
ASP.NET to Silverlight Migration
The paper can act as a checklist of sorts for various ASP.NET features and how to migrate them to Silverlight. You can download a copy of it from here. Do read it and share any comments you may have on it, here.
April 6, 2011
Silverlight 5
With Mix 2011 now just around the corner, there is confirmation that Silverlight 5 beta will be made available during the event, which is as per general expectations.
March 30, 2011
New ways to surface data from SharePoint 2010
Continue reading "New ways to surface data from SharePoint 2010" »
January 10, 2011
Surface 2
Microsoft Surface is a few years old, but I didn't seem to have done very well. There are limited instances of its usage and applications that run on it. Some reasons for this have been a bulky horizontal table, the cost and specialized hardware, which meant high replacement costs in case some parts were to get damaged. The base operating system was also Windows Vista, which we know wasn't all the successful
December 3, 2010
Silverlight 5
Post PDC there were many questions on future of Silverlight and Microsoft itself had caused these speculations. I had shared my views on it here. Well, yesterday Microsoft laid these to rest by announcing Silverlight 5 in the Firestarter event. The event was telecast live across the world using live streaming. If you didn't watch it live, you should be able to get to the keynote here.
November 11, 2010
Silverlight 5 vs. HTML 5
July 20, 2010
WPF - Disabled look for Button
If you check online forums, one of the issues that has caused possibly most grievances is the styling of the WPF button control. You set some property values for things like foreground color and background color and when you run the application things don't always work out. Either the button will show some default animation when having focus or will not use the specified background when is in disabled state.
Recently a colleague was styling a Button control and had a need for custom disabled look and we landed in the same problem. We had set a background color, but when disabled the button will default to the light gray color. Trying various options didn't work out. Interestingly the properties like Foreground or Opacity worked fine. The designer in us said that we can always create a custom style, but the developer in us wanted to know why this doesn't work.
June 8, 2010
Expression Studio 4 Available
Expression Studio 4 (including Blend, Web, Encoder, Design and SketchFlow) was released yesterday at Information Week in New York. See details here. You can get the trial version from the Expression site and in case you have MSDN subscription, you can get the full release from the subscriber download site. Do note that if you are working with Windows Phone 7, do not upgrade to this RTM version.
There was a minor update to Silverlight 4 runtime as well earlier in the month and the latest version is 4.05.50524.0. See details of what's changed here. You can verify if you have the latest or install if not, from here. Also if you have been following Silverlight Media Framework, you would be glad to know that Beta of version 2 is also now available at the codeplex site.
June 2, 2010
Expression Studio 4 Launch
The time has come! Expression Studio 4 will be launched next week on 7th June as part of Internet Week at New York. More details here.
May 20, 2010
UI Prototyping with SketchFlow - A Viewpoint
I have written about SketchFlow earlier here and here. I and my colleague, Sakshi, spent some more time on it and have written a viewpoint paper on SketchFlow (version 3), its key features and how do we compare it with other prototyping techniques. You can access the paper from here, and in case you are interested in other papers from my other colleagues, those can be found here.
Do have a look at the paper and share your comments. With the release of Expression Suite 4 round the corner, we will soon provide an updated version of this paper, that covers the new features of SketchFlow in version 4.
May 19, 2010
Silverlight - Using x:Key or x:Name
May 12, 2010
Working with Images in Silverlight Application
Continue reading "Working with Images in Silverlight Application" »
April 19, 2010
VS 2010 and Silverlight 4 Release
March 23, 2010
Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7
January 19, 2010
SketchFlow to Production
January 13, 2010
Win 7 - Difference between Touch and Gesture
In my earlier blogs (here and here), I have talked about Win 7 and the new touch experience it brings.
When talking about touch, there are essentially two aspects - touch and gestures and during a recent internal discussion, I felt that these aren't that well understood by people. What's really the difference between the two and what it means to be supporting either of these?
Continue reading "Win 7 - Difference between Touch and Gesture" »
November 26, 2009
Death by Silverlight
Yes, this title is influenced by death by chocolate, where in you get an overdose of chocolate. At this time I feel exactly the same for Silverlight (SL). With just over 2 years since the first version made its mark felt, Silverlight has come a long long way. Ironically, as part of TechDays event hosted specifically at our campus, we talked a lot about SL3 and right then, across the ocean, at PDC 2009, Microsoft just unveiled SL4 beta bits.
When we started looking at SL 1.0 back in late 2007, it had limited feature set with XAML support, and most work had to be done in java script. It looked more of media (video) playback at that time. MS called it their RIA platform, but it didn't offer much at that time. With SL2 at PDC 2008 and SL3 just earlier this year in July 2009, a host of features have found their way in the platform. Along with multitude of controls, to .net language support, to IIS Smooth streaming, to perspective 3D, to out of browser experience, SL is a technology you just cannot ignore.
October 15, 2009
Sketchflow
I have been busy with various other non-technical work for few months and hence didn't get a chance to experiment anything new Off late. I finally managed to find time and check out Sketchflow. Sketchflow is a new tool available along with Expression 3 Suite which allows quick and easy prototyping. It allows one to create prototypes that are very near real appliation like, but still retain their prototype look and feel (by using wiggly styled controls) and allow for easy feedback back and forth between you and your customers.
If you have't seen this as yet, you can get a very good idea on it by checking out the following
1. Keynote video from MIX 09, where Jon Harris showed a very interesting Sketchflow prototype. You can skip to about 1 hr 39 min into the video to directly jump to this part
2. From Concept to Production video, another session from MIX 09, by Christian Schormann, where he walks through a snowboard sketchflow prototype. This and the keynote video code comes as part of samples with Blend 3.
3. A very good step by step walkthrough of Sketchflow is available at the dynamic prototyping site.
I am enjoying working with Sketchflow.
October 12, 2009
Visual State Manager feature for a WPF project – Expression Blend Based Approach
June 4, 2009
Silverlight 2 and Web Accessibility
One question I have faced multiple times since the inception of Silverlight technology is how well does it support Web Accessibility requirements? The support for accessibility was quite limited in Silverlight 1; but with Silverlight 2 there have been significant improvements.
April 29, 2009
Microsoft zooms into Car Infotainment with a bang! – Commute UX
As the world awaits better times to invest in newer technologies in the pursuit of mankind’s never ending and ever evolving ambitions on engineering newer things to make life exciting, Microsoft is showing pointers on the road ahead.
Microsoft has taken HCI and car infotainment to the next level through its Commute UX initiative.
Continue reading "Microsoft zooms into Car Infotainment with a bang! – Commute UX" »
February 20, 2009
Silverlight 2 GDR 1
January 20, 2009
Windows Touch and User Experience
One key new feature of the recently released Win 7 beta that should excite UX designers and developers is the support for building touch and multi-touch based interfaces. Some time back, I had posted a blog entry about my first hand experience of using the Microsoft Surface computing device. These new technologies open huge opportunities for designers to transcend existing user experience limitations and build immersive, life-like interactive applications.
December 12, 2008
Silverlight Toolkit: Support for UX Design
As stated on the Codeplex link, the ‘Silverlight Toolkit’ is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle.
It adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports. It includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 12 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and user input. The December 2008 release has some interesting improvements and features that should excite Designers.Continue reading "Silverlight Toolkit: Support for UX Design" »
September 29, 2008
Silverlight 2.0 RC0 Installation
You would already be aware of the release of RC0 of Silverlight 2.0. If not check Scott's blog here. The details on the links for downloading these latest bits can be found in the same blog.
Note that unlike the previous Beta 2, this version doesn't comes with a go live license and if you visit the Silverlight installer page online, you will see that it still points to the earlier Beta 2 version (2.0.30523.8).
September 26, 2008
WPF: Gadget-Style User Experience
September 20, 2008
Emotional Design and Rich Interactive Applications
Last week, we considered the need to derive UX differentiation by deploying RIA technologies (Silverlight, WPF, Flash, AIR and the likes) to address real user aspirations. We also took notice of the fact that very often; these user aspirations are about making the digital technology around them more life-like.
This week, let us dig a little deeper to understand why the users aspire for life-like interactive experiences; and how this has helped us identify the key principles behind ALIVE Design approach.
Continue reading "Emotional Design and Rich Interactive Applications" »
September 12, 2008
Meaningful Differentiation for Rich Interactive Applications and the ALIVE Design Manifesto
Back in April 08, I posted a blog article, “Demystifying the ‘Differentiated’ User Experience (UX)”. In that article, I tried to shed some light on the new buzzword (or buzz-phrase), ‘differentiated UX’, used by Microsoft evangelists to promote emerging UX technologies like Silverlight and WPF. I suggested that the entire ‘differentiation argument’ seemed to focus on the ‘means’ and not the ‘ends’ to be met. I also promised a few more posts to suggest a way forward to correct this and achieve meaningful differentiation.
June 9, 2008
Silverlight for line-of-business applications
Continue reading "Silverlight for line-of-business applications" »
'Devigners' ?... or more complete software developers ?
Continue reading "'Devigners' ?... or more complete software developers ?" »
May 19, 2008
Silverlight v/s Flex: …. And the winner is?
Sliverlight 2.0, the relatively new presentation technology offering from Microsoft, is fast maturing into a viable platform for building high quality Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs). Needless to say, the incumbent presently dominating this space, Adobe Flex, is feeling the pressure. The developer community, RIA developers included, is always on the lookout for opportunities to improve quality and productivity. So how does the contest stack up?
Continue reading "Silverlight v/s Flex: …. And the winner is?" »
April 17, 2008
WPF makes Designers and Developers friends again
I have been playing around with WPF for a while and have been blogging about some of the technical aspects on it. However today I will like to touch upon another important aspect of WPF and that is designer-developer connect.
Having worked on Windows Programming using C++, MFC etc for a decade and working with the various controls, it is a real pleasure to see the capabilities now available to WPF developers. It is true to a large extent that with WPF and XAML and the tools like Expression Blend, designers and developers can work lot more closely than ever before. The working closely is more towards the ability for designers to style the UI for the WPF application and the developers to write the code for it.
Continue reading "WPF makes Designers and Developers friends again" »
April 7, 2008
Demystifying the ‘Differentiated’ User Experience
These days, Microsoft Evangelists are using a new buzzword – Differentiated User Experience’ - to promote the capabilities of user interface technologies like WPF and Silverlight. Needless to say, design community is scrambling to understand what this new term means and how they can build truly unique interfaces leveraging these technologies.
Continue reading "Demystifying the ‘Differentiated’ User Experience" »
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