Archive for the 'Design' Category
Tuesday 20 April 2010 @ 9:56 am
Professional Blackberry
The RIM BlackBerry has become synonymous with always-on, real-time wireless e-mail. Other companies provide similar solutions, but they are a very distant second to the wide acceptance of the BlackBerry. BlackBerry usage is virtually exploding right before our eyes, and in some cities around the world, you see a BlackBerry user every few steps. There is even a new affliction that has been termed “BlackBerry Thumb,” which is a repetitive stress injury to the thumbs from using them in ways in which they were never meant to be used. The BlackBerry can be used for real-time push e-mail, but it also supports real-time wireless synchronization of Personal Information Manager (PIM) data and has the capability to connect the user to systems back in the office in a very secure manner. The aim of this book is to cover two main topics that relate to the BlackBerry environment. In the first section, we start off by discussing how the BlackBerry works and the different components that make up the BlackBerry environment. We then move on to discussing how to install a BlackBerry server and how to prepare for a BlackBerry pilot. Finally, we discuss how to roll out BlackBerrys and the desktop software (if you need it) and how to maintain your BlackBerry environment.
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Professional Blackberry
Tuesday 20 April 2010 @ 9:42 am
Hello! Silverlight 3
Silverlight is a case of the right technology at the right time. This is a time of convergence. Companies want to be able to leverage the experience of their developers when developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Developers want to write applications using the development tools and languages that they are comfortable with. Desktop application developers who previously may have felt that web development was out of reach can feel at home developing Silverlight applications. For Windows client developers writing a web application has been kind of like writing in a dialect that is not completely familiar to them. The stateless model of web applications and the session management model is something that Microsoft tried to hide away when they created ASP.NET, but it’s still not quite like writing a desktop application. If you want to do anything interesting with the user interface it usually requires you to write Javascript on the client side and many more hours of development than it would take to do the same thing in a desktop application.
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Hello! Silverlight 3
Tuesday 13 April 2010 @ 9:57 am
Flex on Java
In 1995, Sun introduced the first Java platform and with it birthed the “applet.” The applet allowed Java applications to run inside the browser with rich functionality and all the benefits of the Java framework, including connecting to the server side. The applet became hugely popular for a couple of years but then its popularity waned. The applet adoption rate dropped mainly because of problems surrounding the browser plugin. Building features in an applet from scratch or even other rich implementations can be expensive compared to the
simplicity of using the Flex framework.
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Flex on Java
Friday 26 March 2010 @ 8:23 am
Effective UI - The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software
Just as a finished software product never looks anything like the original plans and expectations for it, writing this book carried us in a surprising but interestingly different direction than we’d originally assumed. When you imagine what it might take to succeed at building an effective user interface (UI) built with a modern standard of user experience (UX) quality, you might think of high-end design, innovation and inspiration, and technical best practices. These are certainly all important components, but our experience helping other businesses build great products has shown us that a team’s ability to deliver on the promise of good UX is only partially dependent on its creativity and technical competency. The rest depends on creating the right climate for the team and within the company that allows the team to be effective and helps success come more reliably and easily.
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Effective UI – The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software
