Nukeation Machine Teaser by =nukeation on deviantART

 

With reuxables done, we are now gearing up to finish and launch our next product for the new world of UX. Keep watching for more info. The only hint I can give right now is "WPF, WPF, and more WPF" and "Visual Studio" and "Blend". Okay, enough. I'll shut up now. :)

Microsoft just published it's second official Expression Newsletter. It contains part 1 of my "Designer Role" article.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/news-press/newsletter/2007-12/Article02.aspx

For more than a year (actually several if you include research) we have been working on Visual Studio tool Codename NukeBall - a Dynamic Rapid UI Development tool. Essentially, it creates parts (or whole) of UI in your Windows Forms projects with a single click.

Over the past year, the core (NxC) of NukeBall evovled from a simple automation tool to an actual code adapter. We added support for creating your own UI chunks - called WADS (Widely Adaptable Dynamic Scraps) - and added complete support for 3rd party controls. The main power of NukeBall lies in seamlessly converting UI code from one .NET language to another - and some other things we are not yet ready to talk about. ;)

Without further ado, I leave you with a live demo of what Codename: NukeBall can do.

Video: Codename NukeBall Tech Preview 1

Download the hi-res version

Please note that this video shows an internal build. The actual product UI and features will be much more enhanced.

Email me at dax [at] nukeation [dot] com if you're interested in beta testing NukeBall.

More information about will be published soon on this blog.

Even after reaching many mainstream projects, Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF), is still a long way from completely succeeding Windows Forms as the main form of user interface.

Switching to a completely different method of creating applications is difficult for almost everyone. Even after these years of being available to the public, proper documentation on WPF is still hard to find. Another factor in the adoption delay (or in some cases, refusal) is that the word "UX" (User Experience) is often distorted. The real power of WPF is often buried under the false image of UX.

The following are some of the common myths and the corresponding reality about WPF and UX.

UX is just a fancy word for skinning

WinAMP was one of the earliest applications to champion skinning. Soon after many people created software that skinned your application to look more "cooler", and some that even skinned your entire OS! In many circles, skinning was not considered to be a serious thing. Of course, part of it was the whole Designer vs. Developer thing.

User Experience is much more than how your application looks! UX is just as much about how your application behaves, and how your users interact with it. UX is about lessening the amount of work the end-user has to do (including thinking) to finish a task.

Kai Krause, a pioneer of UX, described UI/UX as: "An interface is about hiding complexity from the user, It's about guiding a process, without cognitive understanding of what goes on beneath. Interface design is the art of enveloping the observer in an enticing, "try this" exploration with ever-new elements and designs as the tools to triumph in new territories."

WPF is only about making your apps look better, or WPF is only about creating UI with tags like ASP.NET

This is only partially correct. While WPF does allow you to customize application interface to the deepest levels, and allows you to create UI using markup, the entire scope of WPF is much larger. For a long time, Windows Forms (and its predecessors) were built on top of the foundation laid out in the era of Windows 1.0 and 3.1. Over the last decade, many of the most basic concepts of UI (mostly the controls) became obsolete or non-productive. Some were updated and some were transitioned out, but most of the common things remain. A good chunk of that (Button, Checkbox, Textbox, List, and so on) is still here because it remains useful.

There have always been ideas for new UI and UX. But more often than not, it has been maddeningly impossible to actually create those as the UI technology had been too strict to allow deep customization and creating them from scratch required superb knowledge of C++ (which is too expensive for most common projects). To customize something as simple as a button you had very few choices. You could build a UserControl. But those weren't always an efficient solution, and often too resource hungry. You could create from scratch or customize with inheritance (or in the case of VB6 and other such old technologies, go subclassing till your nose starts bleeding). But that was too time consuming, limiting, and expensive in every way.

This is where WPF comes in. WPF provides a markup based method of creating UI. It is time saving, flexible, and easy. It takes the best of the web and the best of the desktop and rolls it into a single package. WPF allows you to easily customize just about any control using ControlTemplates (structural customization) and Styles (cosmetic customization) that let you do almost anything to the control without messing with the inherent functionality. A hWnd-less (among other things) model lessens many of the resource requirements that previous frameworks had.

If you've ever had an experience with pre-.NET 3.0 frameworks where you thought that you wanted a very small, simple customization in an existing control but there was no simple way to do it, you should know that you will not have that experience with WPF. Practically anything is doable.

(End of Part 1. Part 2 to be posted shortly.)

WPF Transition Framework or WTF, is a simple (and FREE) set of controls (well, control for now) that help you add slick animated transitions to your WPF apps without having to resort to creating timelines or messing with code.

It's as simple as this:

This is the beta release and only 4 (of 10+) transitions are supported: BlurIn, BlurOut, FadeIn, and FadeOut. Check out our wishlist to see what we hope to add to it (including bitmap based animated effects!).

WTF let's you easily control the quality/performance ratio by using the QUALITY property. If you want to stop animations for a moment, then you just turn on HoldTransitions (bool) and it will deactivate all transitions.

Download WTF and check out the sample application!

WTF works with Microsoft Expression Blend 1.0 or later, and Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 or later.

If you've been one of the rare long followers of my blog you might occassionally ask yourself what happend to NukeBall, and all those other WPF apps and tools I've been talking about.

Well, we went over a lot of changes as Microsoft put WPF, Blend, and ORCAS into shape. Finally, we're ready to talk more about it.

We're bring all those things under one roof called REUXABLES (that's pronounced "reusables"). Click this link to find out more. We're going to reveal more over the next few weeks what other stuff we have in production under the reuxables line.

Show #227 | 4/9/2007
Dax Pandhi talks WPF and Expression

Graphics guru and WPF wonk Dax Pandhi shares his thoughts on WPF, WPF/e, Expression suite in general, and Blend in particular. You'll hear the story of how Dax came to be the "Pwop graphics guy" as well as his contributions to the WPF community.

Dax Pandhi is the CEO of Nukeation Studios, an award winning UX studio, he is also a very recent MVP, and one of the first people to say that WPF will rock the world! He and his company have been helping clients prepare for and adopt Windows Presentation Foundation for their applications since 2005. Dax is committed to bridging the gap between developers and designers in the new world of User Experience. He spends his time helping UX-impaired developers adopt WPF, writing about WPF, and trying to get a life. http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=227

This thing started catching attention before it was even announced.

It's hot and it's coming soon.

The ultimate WPF resource. The only hint I can give you so far is - it's powered by Pwop.

I'm still finding that many people are still not trying WPF. Many don't know where to start. So to help people adopt WPF, Andy Eick and I are creating some cool "learning material".

Instead of assuming we know what you - "Joe Developer" or "Joe Designer" - want to know more about in WPF, we'll just ask you.

What do you want to learn about in WPF? Does databinding interest you? Or maybe custom controls? Or scalable layouts? Or the declarative XAML?

Post a comment and leave your thoughts. We will make sure we do our best to satisfy your questions in our "learning material". Really. Free training material tailored to your needs - what more could you ask for?!

Keep reading Andy's blog and mine for updates.

I've just been informed that I'm now officially a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Client Application Development.

Thanks to Abhishek Kant at Microsoft for pushing me for it.

 

 

 

 

 

To recieve an autographed photo of me send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the Ego Dept. @ Nukeation Studios. :)

 

From left to right:

Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India; Tarun Gulati, MD of Microsoft India; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp.; Dax Pandhi (Me), CEO of Nukeation Studios.

This week has been amazing! I don't do much public speaking but the guys at Microsoft got me to be a speaker at IndiMIX'06. The central focus of the event was Expression and Live. Designer and developer. Cricket and Bollywood.

The event (my first big event) was fantastic. It started with a keynote from Steve Ballmer. Following that the application MatchCast, a high-end cricket statistic and analysis application, was showcased by Anil Kumble. Nukeation was the UX consultant on the application.

There was more stuff after that (from 1100 to 1300) but I missed it for two reasons. First, as the winner of Microsoft Blogstar, I had to go backstage and meet Steve himself!

>> This blog has been interrupted to announce that you are reading the blog of a Blogstar. We now return to the regularly scheduled post. <<

I got my photo taken with him, but they haven't sent it to me yet. :/ And secondly, after Steve left, my team had to prepare for our session.

The Designer Session Team

This was my first real, big speaking event and I was nervous as hell at first. The main reason I was able to give a good presentation was because of three incredibly cool people - Leon Brown, Pandurang Nayak, and Deepak Gulati. Our session was 75 minutes and covered the three Expression products. We also launched www.1expression.net (more on that later) and the WebRockstars contest at http://www.webrockstars.in/

I couldn't have asked for a better team! These guys are amazing. Thanks so much, guys! We spent two days in a conference room in Microsoft Mumbai preparing for our stuff. It was a first-of-it's-kind experience for me. Of course, the traditional "pizza while debugging" was a familiar entity.

Our session went excellently. It opened up with Leon (who was our session host) and cricket player Murali Kartik (a name Leon still probably can't pronounce - man, he got a lot of torture from me about that - and lots of other stuff!), followed by a walkthrough of Expression Web by Pandurang.

Pandu explains the session to Murali Kartik

I followed that with a brief intro of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer. After that Deepak and I did a Developer-Designer workflow integration demo. He made a strict "developer looking" application (aka, functional but crappy looking) in Visual Studio 2005 with "Orcas" tools. I opened the solution in ExprID and enhanced it with styles and animations. We got a really great response from the audience. Deepak and I immediately developed this chemistry which allowed us to create a funny little style of working together on-stage. And I think the people really loved it.

We ended our session with three important things: an announcement that great things will be revealed about Expression in the first week of December; the launch of www.1expression.net; and a Q&A session. My fun moment there was representing my fellow designers worldwide - the most audible form of that was during the closing when someone asked "What are the debugging capabilities of Expression Interactive?". Deepak, Leon, and Pandu gave good, real answers. I, of course, said "Designers don't debug". :)

Mandira Bedi, TV personality and the host of the live webcast

I again missed the next session (Developer) as I was asked to be interviewed on the live webcast (75k viewers - made my knees shake!) by Mandira Bedi. I was able to catch Bob Muglia's closing remarks and Q&A. After the event, Leon and I also did a short interview for CNBC.

Bob Muglia answers a question. The four guys in the background are Deepak Gulati, Janakiram MSV, Kevin D'Souza, and Rohit Kapoor.

Praveen Srivatsa, Microsoft Regional Director for Bangalore, takes software construction seriously

 

Over the past 5 days, I got to meet some really great people - Microsfties, MVPs, RDs, simple civilianss, business execs, Cricket stars, movie stars, and who can forget Steve Ballmer! I also got to learn so many cool things that I can't tell without violating a dozen NDAs. That's the price you pay for being close to Microsoft.

All I can say is: hang on - the ride has just begun!

PS. Leon, yes, still MEKNB.

If you don't already know, MIX'06 is coming to India in the form of IndiMIX'06 (http://www.indimix06.com). The keynote will be given by Steve Ballmer.

I've been given the honor of being on the same stage as Steve B. I'm going to be doing a piece on .NET Framework 3.0 - essentially about Windows Presentation Foundation and the Designer / Developer work process. I'll be co-presenting the demo with some really cool people.

IndiMIX'06 will be held at the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. It's a free public event and you can register for it at the official website. If you're not able to come to Mumbai, or if the event is sold out you can watch the live webcast. Register for either at the official site.

My presentation will be from 2:00pm to 3:15pm (local time, +5:30GMT).

For more info, visit http://www.indimix06.com

Working with a designer for your application is a concept many developers find a bit new. A lot of developers we have been working with have struggled with different methods for working with us to design their app in WPF. So we wrote this little guide that explains one of the most efficient and effective methods of working with a designer or design studio to skin your WPF app.

Anyone can use this simple method. It allows the designer to work separately from the developer(s) in Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer or any other XAML editor. The developers work in Visual Studio (using "ORCAS" / "Cider") or ExprID and create forms as usual. The application would look just like any other Windows application. When the designer is finished with the styles, he or she gives the devs the file, they reference it in the project, compile, and voila!

You can read about the process, including source code, in detail in this file below:

PDF File (452K)

NOTE: This document is a draft version. Ignore any lingual or conceptual errors. The code, however, is error free.

The first big milestone for Nukeation Studios' retail effort.

NukeBall Express Edition Beta 1 is now finally available for the public. While not feature complete, NukeBall's powerful NukeWads feature is fully functional in this release.

Y'know what? I can't talk more. I'm just too damned excited. Just head on over to www.nukeball.com and check it out yourself!

Oh, we would really appreciate any feedback you can provide! Just drop us a line at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

My article has finally been published on MSDN. Thanks to the nice people at MS for letting me write this!

No, no - not those Flashers! I mean Macromedia Flash users.

I know many a Flashers have been annoyed (and some downright pissed) at me. One of them actually started yelling at me on Skype. I had to block him!

In any case, yes, I totally acknowledge that I am biased towards Microsoft. If not for them, I'd be a 20-something schmuck with two degrees in computing but still prefering to work at a burger joint. On top of that, I'm a Microsoft Partner (well, technically my company is, but I own my company, so shaddup!) so I've sworn my loyalty to them. But even all that aside, Microsoft provides feature-rich tools that no other competing products can stand up against.

But I think I need to re-address some things I wrote in my "Future of..." post. I wrote about the "three waves" that could potentially crush Flash. While part of me still thinks it to be totally possible, I have come to re-assess some things. Partially, this is because of a couple of discussions I had with a couple of Microsofties (I've stopped naming names. I usually get them in trouble. Sorry about last time, "Mr. X").

The more I dive deeper into WPF, the more I realize it is NOT intended to compete with Flash. Maybe it will compete with Flex. Though, I haven't seen that much adoption of Flex-based apps yet. Maybe Adobe will whip it into shape.

Seriously. If you're one of those people calling Sparkle the "Flash Killer", then I think you oughta give it a shot. It's not really "comfortable" for animation and web purposes as Flash is. And I definetely miss the in-timeline scripting facility Flash provides. You can do that in EID/WPF, but its not as simple.

I would also like to add to my previous post's tirade, that WPF/E is but a small part of WPF which is but a part (well, 1/3 at least) of WinFX. And WinFX - WPF in particular (I can imagine Michele Leroux Bustamante rolling her eyes again) - is going to be what will set Windows apart from Linux and MAC and all.

I don't imagine more than 10% of the industry actively using or trying out WPF at the moment. Y'know, for REAL projects. I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong, of course. But only after using WPF for a real project or two (and I'm not talking simple demo apps, I mean something substantial) will people REALLY appreciate WPF. It sounds good in theory, but it is even better in reality!

Btw, if you haven't noticed, this post does not revolve around a specific point. I'm just ranting. Thank you.

But if you REALLY need me to make some points...

• Flash has an enourmous market cornered that Microsoft does not have a good chance of acquiring.
• Microsoft is smart enough to realize that and is not, in fact, competing with Flash.
• WPF/E is more of a competitor for Macromedia Flex.
• WPF/E will run Flex into the ground. Or Flex will only exist like JSP does with ASP.
• Sparkle DOES NOT have enough flexibility and features required to replace Flash (which was never the point, of course).
• WPF/E is but a part of WPF which is but a part of WinFx. Developers and designers who choose to work under the Microsoft flag best focus on WPF. That's where the gold is.
• WPF will have a bigger impact on "Joe Computer User" than WCF and WWF. Which is totally unrelated to the current topic, but I have to get that in whenever I can for all the years I've spent being labelled "inferior" by developers who consider graphics in the computer world to be sub-standard to code.

Alright, Flashers. Go sleep in peace now. You are no longer under threat.

www.pwopcatcher.com, the official site for Pwop Production's PWOPCATCHER podcast downloader is now live. A barebone alpha is also available.

The look of the site was done by yours truly. It was modelled after the "BORG" skin that will be the default look of PwopCatcher.

I just read Andrew Lucking's blog post about my first video on EID, and it kinda inspired me to give my perspective on Flash vs EID.

Let's recount the basic stuff:

	Flash	EID/WPF
Programming Support	Medium (ActionScript 2.0)	Heavy (.NET 2.0 and XAML)
3D support	Medium (Shockwave 3D or Vectorized 3D output)	Heavy (WPF and DirectX)
Declarative Programming Support	No	Yes
Bitmap Effects Support	Limited	Extensive
Animation Model	Timeline-based: timeline is the ultimate controller; timelines are NOT optional	Trigger-based: timelines control the animation, but the timelines are controlled by triggers; timelines are also OPTIONAL
Cross-Platform support	Extensive	Limited / Currently unavailable (WPF/E details are still sketchy)
Drawing Tools	Heavy	Medium

 

What's EID and WPF potential over Flash? Well, can't say much about WPF/E until I actually use it, but taking WPF as a basic example, here are my thoughts:

NOTE: For the purpose of this post, EID and WPF (or at least the features) are the same. If it is in one, its in the other.

• It all comes back to the timeline. In Flash Timeline is God. In EID, Timeline is just another aspect of an object, and there are more than one timelines and each can be ran parallel to other timelines - even of the same object!! In other words, with Flash we're looking at "time" from a normal layman's perspective; with WPF, it's like looking at "time" from Einstein's perspective.
• In Flash, you have to stop the timeline in order to have a static frame, which makes creating a multi-section Flash website quite difficult. It's not difficult per-se, but difficult when you consider the trigger-only-timelines that EID presents. That would make this much easier.
• Creating 3D content in Flash has always been terribly difficult. Shockwave does add 3D support, but its more like VRML on steroids. If you don't know about VRML, it was a 3D web standard pushed in the late 90s. It was terrible!! With inherent and DirectX support for 3D with shaders and crap is actually fantastic! That alone will land a good blow to Flash.
• There's good DOCUMENT support in WPF. This gives you a document-data presentation component that Flash just can't do! This is one of the chief reasons why the Adobe people are gung-ho on integrating PDF and SWF.
• EID comes from a "component and controls, animate it all" point-of-view, while Flash is "all animation, some component... animate components? uhh, ok, you can try...". The WRAP PANEL and other such controls can seriously kick Flash's ass.

You might say: "Whoa! Hold on. WPF/E does not have all this! It's very puny and limited!"

If you're a Flash or non-Microsoft-stuff user, I'll let you go. If you're a Microsoft-user and you said that give yourself a big kick. Without going into the intricacies of numerology, we all know that this is just version 1. All we have to do is wait 2 more versions. Let me explain:

So I've said all the nice things about WPF and put down Flash. Well, that's not the whole story. WPF is severely limited in many ways that Flash isn't. The user base being not the least of it, of course. Right now, WPF is more close to Macromedia FLEX than Flash.

Branden Hall writes in his post titled "The Flash Killer Cometh":

Well, I can't say I disagree with the first part. For the "mythical Interactive Developer" (I might have to adopt that as my title) comment, well, I disagree there.

Mythical Interactive Developers are not, in fact, mythical. I am one myself, and in the last 7 years have trained 4 such people (10 years and 16 people if you want to count VRML in this). We (ahem) are rare, but not nonexistent. And more shall rise. The gates of Oblivion have opened!! Uhh... sorry, wrong topic.

Anyways, let me get back to my point.

If you are not a Microsofter or are very new to the Microsoft world - the REAL Microsoft World that only devs see - you don't know the power of number 3. As I said, again ignoring numerology, that this WPF 1.0. Microsoft ALWAYS strikes gold with Version 3.

Windows 3(.1) was the most popular in the first generation. Windows 98SE was WAY better than 95 or 98. Windows ME was a fluke, so let's forget that. In the third generation we had Windows 2000 and then XP, now we have Vista which will undoubtedly hit the mark.

Visual Studio 6.0 (#3 of II generation) was way better than anything else. Visual Studio 2005 (#3 of the III generation) is already doing great things!

So step back a bit. Look from a larger perspective. Microsoft is only laying the foundation. Bill Buxton said:

There is a new revolution coming. It will come in THREE waves. Here's my prediction for it:

• First Big Wave: We shift from WinForms to a more Web+Vector like platform. We learn the ropes for the upcoming waves. The Mythical Interactive Developer is born and many Flashers flock to the Microsoft banner - mostly because working with WPF will pay a LOT more than Flash does. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Second Bigger Wave: After a year or more of having WPF out there, Microsoft will have perfect grasp on what's needed, what the public wants, what the designers+developers need. A 2.0 release gives you more power. More people flock under the Microsoft flag. More users keep adopting this technology - even just as runtime. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Tsunami: The work is done. Microsoft has the perfect blend ready. Flash is either killed or is kept limping behind.

Branden Hall also writes:

I recommend reading the posts in this category in old-to-new order. But let explain in short:

Microsoft is right. WPF is not being primed (solely) as a Flash-killer. It will definetely be a Mac-killer tho. But my point is this: If you think WPF is only for making things pretty you are WAAAAAAAY off.

WPF is about getting the presentation layer of a software done quickly and flexibly. Things that required superior subclassing skills and knowledge can be done by an amateur now. The declarative model makes things much easier. WPF will be a boon for developers. It will solve a LOT of problems.

For record let me make it clear:

Windows Presentation Foundation or Expression Interactive Designer will not make anything extra-graphical or extra-interactive unless designer/developer goes to some lengths to actually make it so! When you DON'T skin a control, it will look just like a normal Windows control does. WPF will solve problems such as creating composite controls, creating resolution-independent applications, allowing better and economical usage of graphics hardware and vector to lower CPU usage that GDI+ does not, and more. This is not an animation package (yet).

No. WinFX/WPF/EID is the next generation of development platform. Of course, it won't take long for it become what ASP.net is for the web. But it will be like ASP.net in many ways. WPF/E will co-exist with Flash, just as ASP.net does with PHP and JSP. Of course, it goes without saying that ASP.net is better than PHP or JSP, and so will be WPF/e (eventually).

With that, and the sun shining in my face at 7:20 in the morning, I bid thee good night.

Here's a first look at NukeControls. This is just a small piece of the whole thing - only 3 controls.

nPanel - a special "header" control
nProgress - a super cool Vista-style progressbar for .NET 2.0 with animation!
nNavigator - bi-directional navigation control

All these controls have 6 or more themes, and some like the nPanel, can be customized.

Click the image above to download a ZIP (175kb) with a VB.NET 2005 project. If you don't have VB.NET 2005, you can just run the EXE in the BIN folder.

This is an alpha build only. Expect a public beta in the coming week or two. If you run this in the IDE, do note that only a handful of events and properties have been exposed for this demo. Some themes will not function as well.

Comments are appreciated. We are also looking for people to beta test the controls suite. Beta testers get a free copy of this product! Contact us at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

"The Human UX" or "The Human User Experience" is an article I wrote back in mid/late-2005 for MSDN. During the release of Visual Studio 2005, the article got delayed indefinetely. In retrospect, I think this was for the better. Some of my comments will hit harder now that people are using WPF and EID. Some of the references such as the Windows Vista UX Guide have been updated as well.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Brad McCabe (Content Strategist for the Visual Basic website, as well Program Manager among other things) giving me the go-ahead to update the article (it was written in August 2005 - lots of things became outdated). I got an email from Brad today confirming that the article will soon be published!

For a BIG Microsoft fan (and why not, 60% of my life depends on MS!) there couldn't be a greater honor.

The Human UX serves as an interim-design-guideline - bridging the gap between designing for Windows Forms and designing for Windows Presentation Foundation. It focuses more on theory than on actual code so everything will apply to both technologies. Essentially, this article has "usability" at its heart. I hope for it to be a prelude to an article on WPF Design Do's and Don'ts.

The article was originally thought to be a VB article, then expanded to include C# as well. But my inability to cope with too much C# made it difficult to write it that nicely. And what about the guys who do C++ and J#? So at the end I made it platform-agnostic (to borrow a term from Ted Neward's site). Whether you do .NET or Java, GDI+ or WPF, VB or C#, Dogs or Cats, Batman or Superman, Doom or Half-Li... uhh, you get the idea - this will be good reading for you.

I had an extensive argument with a pro-DotNetNuke (DNN) person, and the only reason we didn't end up giving each other a black eye is that Messenger does not support such actions. He said I didn't mix well with DNN because it was also "nuke" and, I quote, "and you believe that this industry is not big enough for the both of you". That is not the case. After calming him (and myself) down, I promised him a good, lucid explanation instead of just badmouthing his favorite CMS (Content Management System).

I've tried every version of DotNetNuke ever since it was first released. Everytime I install it, I end up uninstalling it in a few days and hope the next version is better.

Carl Franklin had suggested that the .NET ROCKS! site be DNN. But I had such a bad experience with DNN at that time that I ended up creating my own CMS based on Carl's tools he had already created.

For the past few weeks, I've been knee-deep in DNN 4 for a client (will post URL when done). This time there is no other choice than DNN since this site has to be easily editable. And DNN is much better than any other .NET based CMS system I've tried so far. Reminds me of the horrible time I had when creating www.idesign.net for Juval Lowy. I ended up replacing 30% to 50% of the ASP.net Portal Starter Kit (1.1) code with my own, including altering the database structure and sprocs. I half-joked Juval that the code was haunted. So when comparing to that, DNN is quite good.

So what am I ranting about? Well, no offense to Shaun Walker and the others who've worked on DNN - really, I do admire this huge and complex app they've built - but at best, DNN is Kaminoan. That is, it's turning out website clones.

I had told Carl during the aforementioned situation that DNN did NOT give pixel-precision. Carl asked Shaun that same question during the DNR episode about DNN just before 4.0's release. Shaun denied that and said that it is in fact possible. I'm sorry, but I beg to differ. Y'see it's "technically" or "theoretically" possible only. Whether you create your own skin or modify the samples, there will always be that 4-block pattern you won't be able to break. There also spacing and positioning issues that happen when you deal in the "edit" stuff that the modules come with.

I'm not so thick that I'm totally unaware that a lot of times such a solution is more than good enough and is quite helpful for many people. I do appreciate that. Heck, if I hated DNN so much, I'd have said no to the aforementioned client.

If you're a designer who knows how to easily achieve pixel-precision in DNN, not only do I bow to your experise, but I would seriously like to learn how. I can't discount the possibility that maybe it's me who had gotten this all wrong.

I can promise you this: if there's one thing I've learnt in my 8+ years of web design and public-reponse studies, it's that a uniquely designed website will always produce better results than a clone site built on a CMS (not neccessarily DNN - could be any other CMS).

A custom solution also doesn't mean you lose all the editablity and managability you get in a CMS. Check out www.tedneward.com - a good 50% of this site is custom CMS-managed stuff. Ted wanted the site to be editable - but only the stuff that he would update frequently - events, articles, news, etc. I custom designed this CMS in less than 5 hours. Using one of the CMS like DNN would have been overkill, and not to mention I'd have lost control over the design.

And different situations need different CMS solutions (I'm going to punch the person who says "But you can make your own modules in DotNetNuke!"). Back in late December 2004, I took the brilliant SQL back-end that Carl had created for DNR, and I created a special CMS for this particular solution (podcast website). Carl had his own management tool to manipulate the back-end. By mid-January 2005, that site was totally objectified and practically became a Content Engine in its own right. The following sites use the same (or partially modified) version of the engine:

www.dotnetrocks.com, http://mondays.pwop.com, www.hanselminutes.com, www.dnrtv.com ... and others I'm not supposed to mention.

This CMS is so highly specialized for this specific purpose, that to create a new site, all you need to do is script a new copy of the database, copy the .NET 2.0 site, and replace the MasterPage with your new design. DnrTV - the latest offering from this engine, was built in less than 3 hours - including testing and recurring revisions to the design.

Bottom line: after many tries, and the currently ongoing adventure in DNN, I don't consider it practical nor do I think I will soon accept another DNN (or any other prefab CMS) project.

DISCLAIMER: Nukeation Studios consists of more than one person, and any comments I've made here reflect only on me and not on my company. That being said, I still won't personally handle a DNN project ever. I'll just hand it to one of the boys or outsource it completely!

Making a prototype UI for PixelSpread, I started implementing the Zoom feature (it zooms the entire page/spread). I wrote two lines of code manipulating the Transform of the container and binding it to a slider, and replaced over 120 lines of Windows Forms related code! No more handling resize events or anything! This just WORKS.

I wish I could post the code. But this is a commercial application. Still, WPF ROCKS! I might post a similar sample just to show off this feature. Seriously, WPF solves SOOOOOOOOO many UI customization problems!

Now that Windows Presentation Foundation is much more stable, and all it's tools are appearing in usable condition, I've started moving some of our projects to WPF.

The first of which is PixelSpread.

PixelSpread is a more-or-less ANTI-ORGANIZER. Don't let the name fool you though, it has superb auto-organization facilities. PixelSpread is made especially for designers (web and graphic). Photographers have recently gotten tools that let them organize their photos on a digital light table and work like they do in the physical world. Now that's all nice and good, but a much more simple (yet complex) solution is required for graphics designers who have literally thousands of small images (icons, graphical widgets, etc.). The thing is, designers often work with pieces of a single image. For example, take a button for example - it is (in web design especially) comprised of three different images: left side, right side, and the middle that can be stretched as wide as need be. You have to be painfully specific to organize these images so that you can see them in order in your image viewer or Windows Explorer. And organizing multiple such things is a pain. Trust me. I manage over 651k+ such images.

So, in comes PixelSpread. NOTE: This screenshot is from the WinForms .NET 2.0 prototype. This has 60% less features.

So, PixelSpread lets designers randomly drop images to keep here in a "spread". You can have more than one spread and share a single image across multiple spreads - like the new Virtual Folders in Vista. You can store a more than one format for each image. You can instantly copy from PixelSpread to your favorite web design or graphic design software.

PixelSpread maintains 32-bit transparency and supports Vector objects as well. You can zoom in/out an entire spread. Featuring state-of-the-art image compression (storage only), the PixelSpread data storage layer compressed a 291MB Corel PhotoPaint (CPT) file to 10.3MB, and a 325MB PhotoShop (PSD) file to 19MB.

With the move to WPF, the UI is more more flexible and customizable. The memory footprint is smaller, and the application is now seriously much more fun to use! Even with the move to WPF, PixelSpread still uses the Nukeation XCOPY™ Engine written entirely in Visual Basic 8.0 and sporting a custom back-end.

For more information about PixelSpread, subscribe to the RSS feed at http://labs.nukeation.net or see the PixelSpread page there.

PixelSpread is intended for a Q3 2006 release. There will be a free "Express" version of it as well. Expect a beta in the coming months.

http://labs.nukeation.net is now active. Do note, this is a pretty bare bones version. I will beef it up over the next couple of weeks. I have about a dozen downloads to add - as soon as I get time to debug them

Many new projects we are making for our retail division (for developers and graphics designers) are now shown on Nukeation Labs.

Not really the world's most slickest piece of code, but is very helpful in certain situations. I hate to use GUIDs in autogenerated filenames. If you ever need a piece of string for a filename or other unique identifier, the following function's return string would make a nice suffix or prefix. Essentially its a special-character-stripped string representation of "Now".

    Public Function GetNow() As String
        Return Now.ToString.Replace("/", "").Replace("-", "").Replace(":", "").Replace(" ", "").Replace("PM", "").Replace("AM", "").Trim()
    End Function

This is applicable to user-induced file/string creation only. If using for automated functions, you might want to append a random number at the end. This is a very good GUID for many situations. Very simple, and logical for many situations.

I've had plans for a long time to create a special bridge website where me and the boys (and girl) at Nukeation Studios get to show off code, tools, and other cool stuff to our peers (and give it away for free). I started doing that on a miniscule level on this blog, but I'm not your traditional blogger. I can't keep my normal slapstick out of this blog, nor do I have time to manage two blogs (and frankly, I don't think anyone would read my slapstick-only blog anymore).

Eventually, the idea of Nukeation Labs (did you know Nukeation Studios was known as Nukeation Labs before it was legally made into a business entity?) became a bit more. Nukeation will be soon be making a new full fledged dive into Professional Tools development. We will be focusing on two audiences: graphics designers and software developers. With our new tools being planned for WinFX, both these will overlap at some point.

So, my goals (yes, I'll be managing the site singlehandedly at the moment) with Nukeation Labs are:

• Provide technical insight into tools and other projects we are doing
• Provide free source code samples for .NET, Web developement, and Windows Presentation Foundation (and WPF/E whenever that gets here)
• Provide free (and commercial) tools for software and graphics professionals
• Publicly discuss alpha projects that often never see the light of day, but might make for fun discussions.
• And more ... once I find someone to start managing the site. :)

Nukeation Labs will be available in a couple of weeks as soon as I move this blog to a new server. Nukeation Labs will be available at http://labs.nukeation.net/ - that is, once I move this on to a new server.

If you wonder how can WPF make for cool web apps? Here's a basic look. Check out www.macromedia.com/software/flex - FLEX (currently 1.5) gives (currently only Java) developers a Flash based front-end coupled with XML to create visually rich web apps.

For working exampes check out this page with samples.

Now, put the power of .NET and ASP.net 2.0 behind WPF/E and you have some amazing tools! Mix in some AJAX and you're golden!

FLEX 2.0 (in Alpha at the moment) will support .NET - tho not sure about 2.0, Flash 8.5, and ActionScript 3.0. It will be a powerful tool. But I doubt it can hold a handle to WPF.

These are coming out as soon as I find some time to iron out some bugs:

First is NukeControls - which has had some additions and some removals. More on that soon.

Second is a tool I wanted Microsoft to give, but they didn't. A visual editor for .sitemap files. When Beta 2 was going to come out (or had come out, I don't remember exactly) I had asked Scott Guthrie when he was on .NET Rocks! if Microsoft planned to add such a designer in the RTM version. Unfortunately, they couldn't. Scott said they would do it in the next version probably. If you are managing a site with more than 10 pages and 3 levels, you know it can be gruesome going through all that XML code by hand. In comes Nukeation Mapee™ a cool visual editor. I've used this tool for my own work, but I want it to be more easy. Right now it's external. You can configure Visual Studio to open .sitemap via Mapee. Right now it uses a standard TreeView for the visualization. I'm thinking of either writing my own UML style graphically editable UI, or get some 3rd party control. If not too much trouble, I will turn it into an actual Visual Studio designer (a bona fide add-in). I also want to add auto-recognition - it scans the web app directory and makes a full sitemap by itself.

Mapee 1.0, the one using TreeView should be released this coming week along with nukeControls 0.8.

After 6 months and 10 days of slaving over 23 designs (will post the process here later) Nukeation.com has finally been updated. This is version 19 (if you count the officially published versions) based on the layout codenamed "REGENERATE".

HanselMinutes, dnrTV and the other new shows are not yet in the portfolio. They will be added as soon as the sites go live.

Please feel free to visit www.nukeation.com and check out our new services including: Blog Design, WinFX/WPF consulting, Multimedia Services, and more. We've also added a PROCESS page where we show you how projects are done and what it is like working with us.

Feel free to mail (or comment here) any comments, questions, suggestions, or critisizms.

I saw a wonderful quote on Nathan Dunlap's blog:

Here is a great quote from Bill Buxton:

"My sense is that Microsoft is in transition from an engineering-led company to...a design-led company," he said. "There are more designers at Microsoft on any single team as there were, not too long ago, in the entire company. It's a wonderful change."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6001234.html

I for one couldn't be happier. It's the design revolution!! The streets will be colored in Window.Resource and often ignored lowly designers will make the face of the software industry. Go pixel pushers!

Check out the newly updated http://www.dasblonde.net/ featuring a blog we customized for MLB.

WARNING: We're dealing with unsupported, pre-release software and a half-assed attempt to force an installation that was explicitly denied. Don't try this on your production PC! Attempt at your own risk!

I downloaded the 1GB Windows SDK from http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/ with the December CTP for WinFX. I wanted to try out the new Visual Designer for XAML/Avalon codenamed "CIDER".

Anyways, I install the DecCTP runtime for WinFX. Then run the setup for SDK and it fails on me saying the Runtime version mismatches with the SDK. It is clearly not the case, since I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest runtime 3 times.

The installation went smoothly in Windows Vista and on XP SP2 on my Tablet. So I kinda manually ran the SDK installer manually. Here's what I did in case someone else has the same problem.

1. Install the Dec CTP WinFX runtime
2. Run the following installations in this specific order: (this is the SDK DVD image you can run virtually or burn to a disc)

i. msh_setup-i386.msi
ii. WinSDK-x86.msi
iii. dbg_x86.msi
(optionally also run dexplore.msi but often not required)

3. Run the VS Extensions with CIDER.

This should install everything ok. The main installer program is kinda messed up but this works a-ok. I have Cider running nicely now. I do get some errors now and then, but I think that's because its a beta/CTP.

I will start posting sourcecode of the two XAML samples I'm making - FXAurek and FXBesh.

I'm a VB guy. BASIC runs in my veins. I was programming in BASIC on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ when I was 4. But suddenly, I find myself trapped in a world of C#!

The project was a highly customized blog running the dasBlog engine for Michele Leroux Bustamante. The problem is that dasBlog is all in C# (1.1/2003!). I have done very little work in C#. And now I know why.

Just getting a simple data editing webform to work is like battling a Krayt Dragon while being blindfolded! I did manage to finish the work, but it was painful! Now I'm led to believe that one of the following is the case:

• Visual Basic users are spoilt and can't live without autocomplete and automatic code formatting
• C# is terribly unproductive
• I was drunk and I didn't know it (quite possible) or as they say in C# [quite possible]
• C# just plain sucks, while VB just plain rocks
• VB just plain ROCKS, while C# just plain sucks
• I had a terrible dream, like the one where I'm being chased by angry country singers
• {your opinion here}
• {your other opinion here}
• or as a C#'er told me, "try C++, then you will see how easy C# is"

'Nuff said.

Since Beta 1, I've been trying out the cool custom control features of Visual Studio 2005. And along the way, I've made some controls for in-house applications and some other projects. Now, you know me - I'm graphical to the core. These are super sweet looking eye-candy controls, and with solid functionality (as far as I know!).

Take a look at some of the controls:

Nukeation Navigator was inspired by VISTA and Microsoft's corporate site design. It has back-next navigation in a single control with 6 different themes ("Aero Glass", "Pure Liquid", "Jungle", "Nuke" [of course], "Lava", and "Rainbow").

Nukeation Progressbar is a chunk from the upcoming software NukeBall. We use this heavily for simple progress display. Very cool looking.

Nukeation Panel is a subclassed version of the standard Panel control. But this one has a gradient background, dropshadow, and a TITLE and DESCRIPTION property - ideal for wizards or dialog headers! Supports custom colors, 6 in-built color schemes, or OS-theme.

nProgress is old (from 1.1), but was ported to 2.0 and had some new functionality added to it. This is a fixed-size progress control with some seriously cool graphics! The "downloader" of PwopCatcher created by Carl Franklin uses this very progress bar.

I'm trying to fix some problems in nRange a range meter that shows 3 different ranges (ex: blue 5-10, green 8-23). If that is done, I'll pack it in.

Uhh... pack it in to what? Well, NukeControls! A freeware pack of cool aforementioned controls for .NET 2.0!

 

These controls will be released under the "I don't give a damn what you do with it, but some credit would be appreciated" license. More on this later.

It's 2:45am. My eyes are watering, my hands are cold (its freezing!), I still have a ton of work to do, but I haven't been this happy in a long time!

Less than 10 minutes ago, we just added complete support for Managed Visual C++ 2005 in NukeBall!! We had six VPCs running with 12 different builds and we finally got the code done.

Yes, the colors are AWFUL, but don't worry, we'll use Windows Vista based screenshots on the official site when we update it on 23rd December.

I'm happy that we will be able to give the power of NukeBall to the *ahem* "serious developers" (yup, we VB'ers just have fun, we don't do any REAL world ... hoo boy).

It's that time of the year again. Last year I started doing websites for Carl Franklin. Carl and I worked together to create a cool componentized website which sort of became an engine that was reused on many different websites including Mondays, the upcoming 64-bit Question, and many others.

Nukeation is currently working on revamping all the existing sites and upgrading to ASP.net 2.0 as well creating some brand new ones. See Carl's blog for more info.

The new year will be .netalicious! I for one can't wait to see PwopCatcher in action.

See how to achieve minute control over positioning in HTML or ASP.net pages.

If you are a regular (and believe it or not, I do have some regulars) you have heard me boast about this wonderful new product we were gonna release in Q4/2005 called NukeBall (www.nukeball.com).

But it all went quite. The September public beta was never released, and the site hasn't been updated either. What gives? Well, I think we did a bit too hard to be like the geniuses behind Windows Vista, and we wound up with the added disadvantage of delays as well.

The truth of the matter is we are not a giant corporation. We are finally making the transition from service-oriented work to retail products. It's a big leap. The crux of the matter is that we don't want to provide half-hearted service to our existing and new clients, nor do we want to release a not-so-good product to customers. That's why we decided to delay the release. We have been squirreling away code, however, and NukeBall is more feature-rich than before. Alpha builds are being used in-house for our projects and we are happy to say that it is a robust product.

What next? In the next couple of weeks we will release a beta version to our beta testers (email beta@nukeation.com to get involved and recieve goodies and free software). Immediately after that, we will release a CTP of NukeBall Express which will have a full license for anyone who wants to use it in their current projects. Hopefully, by the end of the year, or in early January, we will make the final builds of NukeBall Express and NukeBall Professional available for the masses.

Subscribe to the feed on www.NukeBall.com to be notified when we update the site later this week.

See the world's most sophistacted skin design.

Nukeation Studios is now offering full XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) based design services. We will also provide appropriate updates and revisions as the runtime and framework changes.

For a limited time, we are providing free 2 hours of consulting with our WPF and Design experts on how you can make your projects in a WPF based front end.

For details, please contact info [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com.

More information will be posted on www.nukeation.com in coming weeks.

Why, Oh Powers that (V)Be? Why?

Just when I calm my tortured heart that VB 8 is almost in my hands. Just when I think one more month and I'll be releasing apps in 2.0. Just then... just THEN ... you show me VB 9.

Whhyyyyyy?

I'm still too excited and my imagination is running overtime with the possibilties. I am just not able to put it into words ... not yet. I need time to heal.

But I will say this: UX - User Experience - is gonna be the new freakin' thing everyone wants to get their hands into. I am quite confident Microsoft WFP/E (or Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) will replace Macromedia Flash in quite a large percentage (like ASP.net did PHP), and Flashers (not the lewd kind, but the people who make stuff in Flash) should start learning about XAML and WFP if they want to earn better. Flashers don't earn as much as programmers. This is where that gap can be closed.

I know, I'm inviting competition. UX is the very core of Nukeation Studios. That's how I made it. That's what I'm passionate about. We are already providing consulting services for those who want to get a head start. We did the same for ASP.net 2.0, and Windows Forms 1.0 before the days of .NET 1.0's rise. My team and I are quite confident that we will be enriching many a applications with WPF very soon. If you'd like to know more, just drop us a line at wfp [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com.

For a limited time we are ready to provide up to 2 hours of free consulting about WFP and how to plan it in for your upcoming software or the next version of that software.

We will also be announcing new WFP services in the Developer Services portion of our website.

And lastly, better UX means more work, and more work means I need fresh blood.

Jobs @ NUKEATION

For WFP development we need people with basic knowledge of XAML, Flash, 3D Design, 2D Vector Design. Any single talent out of these (with a willingness to learn more), and an intense amount of creativity & imagination is what we're looking for. Take a look at our portfolio. If you think you can match our work, we would be glad to have you on board.

3 paid internships with the same specification are also available. Drop us a line at hr [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com

Microsoft's Expression product line seems very impressive. When you take into consideration the cross-platform (WPF/E) power and the extreme flexibility of WPF/XAML, and not to mention the solid power of programmability (something Flash lacks in boatloads) WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself!

If you don't know anything about all this, think power of the world's best programming language, mixed with futuristic Final Fantasy like software interfaces. The future is finally here. Where do I want to go today? I wanna go to the place where they store the bits of Sparkle in Microsoft!

If you've worked in Flash and if you've worked in .NET, you just KNOW that the possibilities are mind-boggling. I have half a mind to create a time machine and go to the release date!!

WPF/E supports portable devices, Mac OS X, and possibly Linux as well! This is one of those few (if not the only one) things Microsoft made that is cross-browser compatible to such extremes. Check out Sparkle's features.

Windows Vista will finally be that massive graphical step in a visually better computing world. Not to mention all the other stuff - but I'm a graphic guy so I don't see nothin' else! :-P

Also, check out the ATLAS page. I'm gonna get my hands dirty with all this this weekend!

I'm still shaking from excitement over Expression. I better stop trying to write my thoughts about it before I go completely nuts!

EXPRESSION ROCKS!!!

Web design tip - alternate to ImageMaps.

No, I'm NOT at the PDC. Thanks for reminding me! Grrrr.

But if YOU are at the PDC, then you might want to check out the LIVE recording of the new DNR Quiz Show tomorrow (12th September) - the audience gets to participate live and win literally thousands of dollars worth of swag. For more info check out Carl's blog.

The show's site (made by yours truly) will be going live tonite or early tomorrow. Keep watching this space for more info.

NukeBall Express Edition Beta, which was originally scheduled for a August 27 release has been delayed. We are currently planning for a mid-September release, with a full commercial release of the software after the launch of Visual Studio 2005.

The main reason for the delay is quality control. We don't want to release a public build until it is really able to knock your socks off.

More updates will be available soon.

I got home a bit early yesterday and found myself with about 12 hours of extra time before I rebooted into WORK MODE. I whipped out Ressurection of Evil and finished it! Review coming later.

Am currently listening to The Wonders' THAT THING YOU DO (fantastic tracks!) and typing up the last remaining parts of The Human UI.

I've been posting so much not-so-substantial posts that I think it's time to make this blog somewhat richer again. So here is a preview (draft version) of The Human UI article.

---

The Human User Interface

Dax Pandhi

Nukeation Studios

 

We developers often see monochromatically. Well, that’s a bit harsh. We do have coloring in our code. But that’s about it. And sometimes we’re so pumped up on technology – especially new technology – and the function of the software (I bet even right now you’re saying “SHOW ME THE CODE, stop talking!”) that we forget the end-user just might have different priorities. We work hard to make the app work – they just expect it to work, so they have additional wishes too. This is truer if you’re into retail software, or something that will be used by non-techie people. While the first instinct would be to call them ungrateful, they are our customers, so let’s see how we can make the experience better for them.

The question is: if you are going to be spending a few dozen hours (or more) a week staring at a particular software, you at least want it to be easy on the eyes. You also want it – and need it – to be as easy to navigate and use as possible. With the amount of software being churned out, an estimated 4 out of 10 software have a UI that the end-user really likes and is instantly comfortable using.

A massive amount of software is created for corporations. Whether it is developed in-house, or under the care of a consultant – more often than not a bare minimum time, effort, or money is invested into creating a better UI. The ‘designer’ role is rare in the development cycle – especially in the world of Windows® applications. This is not to say your application’s UI is ugly. There’s just a whole lot more you can do.

There are some basic rules to follow to have a much nicer looking and better functioning UI for your application. It doesn’t require too much investment of time or money on your part, and adds a good return-on-investment.

Today we will discuss twenty points of UI design that you can integrate into your application design phase easily. The result will be richer applications with better functionality –a “human” UI. But before we delve into that, let’s talk a bit about the basics of proper UI design.

---

The whole thing will be published on MSDN soon.

Alternating between cold drizzles and scorching sunshine, the road back home is becoming boring. My blogging addiction keeps me alive - that too only when I'm in range of a wireless service zone.

Expecting to be back home in 6 hours.

Almost finished Dr. Donald Norman's EMOTIONAL DESIGN. He's a brilliant man - check out his site www.jnd.org for a sampler of the book.

I also finished the almost-final draft of my article THE HUMAN UI. Will finish it completely by the time I get home. It should be published shortly. I hope it will be helpful to all developers and designers working under the Windows flag.

Ok ... connectivity is down ... going offline. Sigh.

We've been meaning to announce this for some time now, but are waiting for when we update www.nukeation.com properly. We've started a new service for Blogs. We make 'em for you. We prefer using dasBlog - which is what this blog uses - but we cater to just about any blog out there. For dasBlog based blogs, we've even created extensions such as the "I am..." tile you see on the top left, a photo blog/gallery, super cool skins/themes, and much more. We hope to make the typical blog into a more comprehensive media hub. Of course, all these extensions are totally free. We just charge (mostly peanuts) for the work we put into your blog. Standard blog design rates start at $100. Contact us today!

Tell you what - mention the following code phrase "Nukeation Rocks!" in your subject line and we'll give you a nice little 15% discount.

I said it first, I said it again, and I confirmed it too. And now it's officiall announced. Acrlyic will be the Visual Designer for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly codename "Avalon"). Check out the August CTP.

I've said it before and I'll say it again AVALO-- eh, Windows Presentation Foundation ROCKS!

Finally, after days of cloudy, gloomy weather (which didn't result in rain either), the sun shines brightly today. As the sun sets in the west (like it would ever set in North!), and as a large database is being copied to my client's server, I sit in the twilight enjoying the last rays of the day, with a cool breeze, and Dr. Don Norman's books Emotional Design, and The Design of Everyday Things. These books serve as an inspiration for my article "The Human UI" (also inspired by The Human Factor columns from MSDN).

That's right - NukeBall, the Ultimate RUID Tool for Visual Studio 2005 is now nearing it's release. We're putting out a public beta of the Express Edition (analogous to non-alchoholic bear, but a bit better) near the end of the month. We have officially announced the contents and features of the software, the Express Edition, IDE Integration and more. Check out the website at http://www.nukeball.com

We still have a few slots left for beta testers. We give amazing rewards. For info contact beta [ at ] nukeball [ dot ] com.

 

"The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 are available as a separate download. The The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 provide developers with support for building WinFX applications using Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005. This support includes XAML Intellisense support through schema extensions for the editor, project templates for the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly known as “Avalon”) and the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as “Indigo”), and WinFX SDK documentation integration. It does not include a graphical design surface for either the Windows Presentation Foundation or the Windows Communication Foundation."

This text is from Microsoft's website. Please note the highlighted area. Is it just me or does it sound like visual designers (so dryly referred to as Graphical Design Surface) is *the* thing to see in the upcoming CTPs or Betas of WinFX SDK? I for one couldn't be any happier.

I'm very happy to report that I've found Vista Beta 1 to be so stable and reliable that I'm moving a few projects onto the Vista platform. I'm also thinking of installing it on my Tablet PC over the weekend.

To move work on to Vista, first I had to see if all my work applications worked properly or not. Office 2003 has worked nicely, and so has Corel Graphics Suite 12. Next came VS2005.

Visual Studio 2005 Setup runs in all it's aero-enabled glory.

Somehow, the setup failed when it started to install the only missing prerequisite - MSXML (3 or 6, I can't remember at this moment). I had to go the WCU folder on the DVD and manually run that install. After that, VS2005 installed very quickly - faster than XP - or is that just my imagination? In any case, after the uneventful install, I launched VS2005 and it didn't give a single error or warning. You can see the IDE in the shot below.

The Aero "Express" version Form shown here is the same theme I encountered when installing Longhorn on my VPC. The cool thing (tho maybe it might appear annoying later on) is that the animations run while you're designing the form. The default button's blue tone fades in and out; the progress bar's "filled" are has a shine pass over it (marquee mode makes the bar show up as 100% and the shine keeps passing over it to show somethign is, in fact, happening). The only problem I saw so far in VS2005 on Vista, is that some parts of the UI - mainly the toolstrips - fail to draw, and end up as black blocks. Forcing a redraw (minimize and restore) solves it tho. Dragging / stretching tool windows causes it again. Not much of a problem tho.

I made this quick sample to see how things look. This was a two-fold test. I installed our untested build of NukeBall, the upcoming Rapid User Interface Development tool we are making here at Nukeation Studios, in Visual Studio 2005. I saw that the endless hours of coding paid of. It worked. If you look at the top left corner of the image above, you can see the NukeForms command sitting next to your standard Add Item button. While we don't officially support Vista 1, each and every piece of content in NukeBall does, in fact, work on Vista.

I quickly made this sample below with NukeWads and NukeForms. The lower progressbar is in marquee mode (infinite progress).

I tried over 27 different applications I've made (including some made long ago in VB6) and they all ran nicely on Vista, except for a couple of those VB6 apps that relied on some obsolete code. All in all, I give Vista as many thumbs-ups as can. Very cool. Can't stop saying that. I fear I might scream VISTA in the middle of the nigh- day (I work at night, sleep at day).

Coming up next: Adding Aero to my blog, and more.

Now that I have Vista running on dual-boot on the best machine I have, I'll be doing a long series of posts about my experience with Vista.

Being more of a graphics guy, I delved deep into the UI first off - it's hard not to with Vista - it's so slick. It's so slick, that my cursor often slipped.

Contrary to what has been said, the Windows Vista UI - at least in Beta 1 - is not 100% Avalon/Vector based. Parts of the Window Frame certainly seem to be using VisualBrush from Avalon, but the buttons, progress bars, even icons, are all bitmaps. This is expected, since this UI will be replaced (possibly) by a super secret project called "Project M" that most people in Microsoft refuse to speak of. While bitmap handling may very well be done by Avalon, as it is strongly suggested with the smooth scaling, we still have to wait a while before a full Avalon UI comes along. Avalon - even in Beta 1 - is less than half complete. They don't have merge modes which are desperately needed. Avalon doesn't have a visual designer (yet). And so, there still is time.

I think ClearType doesn't blur nicely. Like I said, Avalon still needs a lot of work.

The "AERO" theme is built right on top of the Lune template. If you go to <root>\Windows\resources\themes\ you will see the Aero theme file. The .msstyles file in the subfolder is actually a disguised DLL. I don't know if this violates the EULA, but in theory, if you make a copy of this file and rename it to something.dll, and drag it into Visual Studio or any Resource explorer/extractor, you can see the bitmaps with which windows is built on. But thee theme system is much different from XP. For one thing, it overlays these bitmaps on Windows with Aero - while I don't have solid proof, I feel it when anything is drawn on the screen. Trust me. This is my domain (www.nukeation.net :P). But bad jokes aside, I love the UI - not the eye candy, but the layouts, new widgets, the whole new design paradigm. But more on that in an upcoming post.

UPDATED - August 6 2005: I was actually slightly askew in saying that the Aero theme is built right on top of Luna. While such a thing does exist, it used in the non-dedicated graphics card (or Aero Express) environment. When you have a solid AGP or PCI-E card, it will use Avalon to theme everything - but it will also use parts from the Luna-based theme template. It could also be that it has seperated resources (similar graphics but in different places, or perhaps drawn/rendered in real-time) for AERO. So, I was not wrong in what I said, but I wasn't totally right either.

I tried out some of my .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 apps on Vista. They ran perfectly. Non-.NET applications such as Corel PhotoPaint 12 also ran nicely. ACDSee 7 failed miserably. Thankfully, the Add/Remove Programs applet is now much nicer and easier. I intend to install Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 on it next.

The first thing that impressed me with Vista (after the UI, of course) is the so obvious speed. I know it's running on a 2gig machine on a 3GHz HT Processor, but still it works faster than my XP installation. It's true I don't have much installed on it (yet). The shutdown is still impressive. 3 seconds flat. Without fail. The startup is just as fast (relative to XP).

I haven't gotten a chance to actually USE the Virtual Folders outside of a small test. I expect them to be quite helpful. The instant search/filter capabilities are GREAT. But the search box in Start Menu is a pure nuisance. I am a super-Power-User. I need my keyboard more than my mouse. I don't CLICK "Run". I hit "START", "R". Now when I do that, I get a bad assed "r" in the search box. Microsoft, REMOVE IT! At least make it OPTIONAL, dammit. This and the extra space after the close button in the titlebar are the two strong negative points I have found in Vista.

More soon in Part 2. I gotta go boot into Vista. And I just realized as I type this - Vista is much easier to type than Longhorn.

At 23:29 on Wednesday night my long running download of Windows Vista Beta 1 (formerly Windows codename "Longhorn") was finally completed.

With a shudder, I tested the ISO image for the possible corrupt data and as I held my breath, I saw the progress bar reach 100% without a single error. There is a God! And he writes managed code!!

I fire up Virtual PC 2004. I start the installation. Very smooth. A bit dull, and took too long even on a 1064MB RAM VPC. The installation takes over an hour but it WORKS. It's installed. It's rebooting. It starts up... in 16 colors.

No problem. Let's install the drivers and VM Additions. There. 32-bit color. Wow. Looks coo- hey, wait a goddamn minute - I thought Aero was TRANSPARENT. Everything on the screen is shiny, but opaque. What the...? I google up some stuff, and find out (should've known) VPC doesn't support direct host hardware utilization. Damn.

I don't have any machine powerful enough that is also available for taking risks. Damn. No. Risking it on my Tablet - which doesn't have a CD or DVD Drive - would be foolish. So, I scour a stand-by PC, and rip out the 72 gig drive (PATA, yuk) and plug it into my main production PC - a big 3GHz HT PC with 2 gigs of RAM, 2 monitors, and a 128MB nVidia GeForce FX series graphics card. Dual boot will be fine. If anything goes wrong, I can just rip out the extra disk and be done with it. But BIOS doesn't detect the damned disk. I check the cables and mess with the jumper settings. Master, slave, primary, secondary. Crap. Okay, so I finally have it running now. I log into Windows XP, and see the 2 new partitions in My Computer. Phew! I run the setup file, enter the long product key, click next, and BOOM - the setup stub crashes. I try again. It crashes. And again. And again. So, I say "<bleep> it". I write the ISO onto a blank DVD. 7 minutes later, the disc is burnt. I say, hey what the heck, let's try it once more from the disc. Setup runs successfully!! It's a Disc-run only thing, I guess.

Setup runs nice and quite (faster than the VPC install, of course) while I watch Cartoon Network at 4:30am. I spent the time between the download's completion and now to mess with drives, old PCs, new PCs, and Virtual PC! 39 minutes later, it's installed. I gingerly touch the mouse as the setup finishes up. A new window pops up...

... I stop squinting long enough to peek out of the corner of my eye and - OH NO, OH MY GOD...

it's TRANSLUCENT.  Longhorn's Aero UI in all it's glory. Blurring the background and casting a drop shadow. I had a little tear in my eye.

Unable to contain the joy, but wary not to cause any damage to the beta installation, I start popping open folders and being amazed by all the eye candy. To quote Michele Leroux Bustamante, "No, please, make it stop, don't make me go back, I don't want to go back...I'll never go back...ok, fine, I'll go back...for now...but I won't like it..." All I could think of was what will I do now? How will I take these eyes back to that old, dry, and boring Legacy OS? XP themes aren't that nice anymore.

Pushing that damning thought to the lower recesses of my so-called mind, I plow on. It's SO cool. The graphics, of course, are. But I'm talking about the organization features. The MUCH needed improvements.

You're probably asking where are the screenshots? well, you will have to wait. I haven't installed Corel Capture on Longhorn, and Paint+PrntScrn is too tiresome. I'll post more tomorro-- uh later today - I see the sun coming out.

Once I was satisfied to experience the glorious interface and the features, I accessed the other hard disk, opened my Visual Studio projects folder, and started running various WinApps built in VS2005/.NET 2.0 - they ran nicely. So did all the 1.1 apps. I tried to hotwire some of them instead of installing them - .NET ROCKS (and that's a show too) - it all worked.

Two negative points which I will elaborate on in my detailed post later, are:

The CLOSE buton on the top-right corner has to be the ALIGNED to the FAR RIGHT - no extra pixels. I have a habit of slamming the cursor into the corner and blindly clicking to close a window. That doesn't work in Vista, as there is some extra space after the red button.

The second point is that the new Common Dialogs (Open/Save) have a new sidebar with common places and common searches for easy navigation. The feature is quite cool, but the layout is all cramped. In some places in Vista, I do feel claustrophobic.

Alright, that ends my experience in Vista-land for the moment. More this evening - with screenshots.

...things that I know, nobody told me...things that I saw - they still controoool mee...

As I listen to The Strangest Thing by George Michael at the maximum volume possible with these headphones, I see the File Transfer Manager's progress bar hit 86% - 336.8MB and dropping at a rate of 10.4KB/sec. After a horrible power failure due to my power supply unit being burnt to a toasty crispy black piece of junk, I fear completing this download only to find out that the file was corrupted midway at around 660MB.

Internet, power, and human failures notwithstanding, I've spent over 75 hours as of now to download Vista Beta 1. If this download is corrupted... I shudder to think of what might happen.

We'll find out the truth in 8 hours and 57 minutes. May the Force be with me.

So I waited a few years, and then some months, and then many days, until Microsoft released Windows Vista Beta 1. So, it's a 2.42GB ISO. I have to start downloading it now (because it will be sent to MSDN Subscibers in DVD form in SEPTEMBER!). So I have to download something that I will get for free (well, not free free).

So what's the problem? The problem is that I'm downloading on a freakin' 115kbps connection via my cell phone which serves as a modem - the fastest connection available in this town-sized replica of tattooine. I started downloading on the 27th, and it this very moment, I still have 1066.5MB left to download at 10.1kbps (which is around ~30 hours worth of downloading).

The only stuff I know about Vista is the couple of videos I've seen on Channel9 and at Paul Thurrott's site, plus the stuff I read at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

I just hope I can see everything first hand and in proper performance on my 2GIG VPC.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Still waiting... sigh.

UPDATED: 4 hours later

Current status - 969.7MB ~29 hours

While waiting for Longho- er, Vista to download, I...

• read 3 Star Wars novels
• found out that your thumb is more sensitive that your index finger as it is used less often and the nerves are more sensitive as a result
• have over 183 'lines' in my thumbprint
• saw something resembling Joe Pesci near the center of my thumbprint
• found out that eating realy spicy food before going to bed gives you horrible dreams about your 2GB download file being corruped
• made over 17 backups of the temporary download file for Vista, including one "fallback milestone" at 660MB when a power failure occured and my UPS died with it
• started preparing for NukeBall's CD production, booklet printing, manual design, and other such stuff
• updated the frontpage of Nukeation
• re-read the "Q Continuum" trilogy
• am closing in on the secret of life and the universe - I think I might completely solve that mystery when I download Beta 2
• photographed and studied a lizard hanging out outside my window (I'm the only one at 3am who has light on, so the entire state's insects visit me at night)
• discovered 78 ways to kill mosquitos
• started working on my article 'The Human UI'
• listened to Burning Man in a loop for 3 hours
• finished (from start to finish) Republic Commando over 4 times
• finished WORK
• the list is building...

NukeBall - The ultimate RUID Tool

I'm not sure whether it's good or bad. Windows Vista. Microsoft Windows Vista, formerly Windows codename "Longhorn". I expected 2006. I expected XXP. I even humored the notion of Microsofticus Windowsicus VII. But VISTA?

Okay, I'm calm now. Well, calmER.

Okay - VISTA.

Vista.

Vista. Hmmm.

Doesn't sound too bad.

Vista.

Vista.

Okay, now I'm feeling like I'm stoned.

Anyways, so MS told Paul Thurrott it's about "clarity". Longho- I mean VISTA will give you focus on what matters and what YOU want to do.

I don't have anything else to say at the moment. I need to let this sink in a bit first.

...

...

...

...

...

...

VISTA?! THAT'S A $*&#!*% MOUTHFUL!

AFTER 24 HOURS...

Okay, so now it's sinking in. Guess it's not that bad. It's quite good actually. And I also guess it's good they have a non-technical name that non-techs can get attached to.

But the best part is - it's not named after a cat. No, I don't anything against cats, but you know what they say "An Apple® a day, makes you delusional, stupid, technologically inferior, intellectually posterior, and a freakin' MAC LOVER!" You got that, Mac.

Microsoft rocks! VB Rocks. .NET ROCKS! (And that's a show too - in fact, vote for it at www.podcastawards.com) and EVERYTHING MANAGED ROCKS!

ROCK ON, REDMOND!

YEEEXTRA, yeextra. Read all about it. NukeBoy makes breakthrough in his super-secret-world-take-over-software-application!

Finally, this puny little planet will be all mine - ALL ... MINE!!! Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha.

 

Sorry about this weird post. I'm just very happy that the long standing problem (resolved in 3 lines of VB code, as usual), the upcoming, (hopefully) world changing (no world domination - scout's honor) add-in for Visual Studio 2005 (C#, VB, J#) is now finally on it's way. Of course, we won't be able to ship a full working version (except for the free Express Edition) until the actual RTM of VS2005 in November.

For now, the only thing I can tell you is that it's a RUID (Rapid User Interface Development) tool for Windows Forms application (C#, VB, J#) that is PURE .NET (zero redistributable assemblies, btw), it has some seriously cool features, an express edition (totally free) for personal or commercial usage, a massive visual library (600 or so at last count), and is titled NukeBall. Just wait till you see what the team has packed into this tiny little app that just might change the way you work!!

It has been ages since I wrote my last article. I've written some stuff now and then, but not a whole article - let alone a series. Previously, I had said that I would write a series of 101 articles on Avalon. Well, there are many changes in Avalon in Beta 1 and many more to come in subsequent releases. The biggest will be the addition of a visual designer to the IDE.

So, I have decided to create an open ended series of articles that revolve around UI design. I'll start with Windows Forms based UI, then move on to skinning, and later on to Avalon. So far, I have about 4 articles planned, with more to be added as more Avalon's fate is released. As with AVALONfiltered, I hope to have these articles published by MSDN. But if they don't want it (their loss), I'll be posting them here.

I also intend to cover the general theories of 'attractive design', the effectiveness of a good UI, and other design philosophies through out the series. I will be releasing the first article by the end of this month (unless MSDN really wants it, then it is totally up to them).

In my last post, I mentioned Blend Modes and their need in Avalon. To follow up that with an actual sample/simulation, I made this mock-app.

"XRavalon", the hypothetical Avalon application, let's you view X-Rays and CAT scans in 3D and annotate them. This is possible ONLY WITH BLEND MODES.

Here are a few screenshots of XRavalon and movies:

Flash SWF (LoFi) - direct link to 136kb SWF file

QuickTime MOV (HiFi) - 4.09MB ZIP

This was created in 3D Studio MAX with a bunch of simple 'Plane' objects and alpha-channel'd images. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a larger image array of a CAT scan - this has only 9 - while in a real world app, doctors could feed many more images to create a virtually 3D model of the brain.

To implement this in Avalon is child's play. Again, normal transparency channels WOULD NOT DO - as important artifacts in the scans (or any image) would be hidden or diffused, while ADDITIVE transparency/mixing would preserve the contrast/intensity - so the color may not be true, but the artifact can still be seen. A reverse (SUBTRACTIVE or DIVIDE) blend mode would be used to annotate the layer with text or graphics.

NOTE: I know nothing about CAT scans and X-Rays and how doctors use/annotate them right now in the real world. This is just a simple simulation of a real-world possibility.

I've been saying for a long time that Avalon needs blend modes (or Merge-Modes for Corel users like me). I need to back my request with solid evidence. So, here it is.

These are examples of the 2 blend modes used the most (at least by me and a few hundred game developers) - Add (lightens), and Subtract (darkens).

Example 1

Image 1a - a vector based sphere and the Pwop logo with Add (aka Additive) mode applied.

Image 2a - the same graphic without blend modes.

Example 2 & 3

2a/3a: A lightning bolt and a sparkle/lensflare/shine thingy (32-bit transparent raster image) without blend mode on a simple white background.

2b/3b: Same objects on a multicolored/textured background - better but still not that cool.

2c/3c: Additive mode applied to both object - the color values of the underlying pixels is added to the overlaying pixels and the result is a more natural looking glow.

Example 4

Colors often clash - making some parts totally ugly. One such combination is a blurred/transparent-gradient black over a yellow backdrop. (see 4a)

Now, we add a Subtractive blend more to the shadow layer - and voila - subtracts it's own value from the underlying pixel giving you a more natural tone.

Example 5

Okay, so we've seen the visual part of blend modes - now let's see the functional part of it.

We have a hypothetical software called X-Rayvalon. This app can be used by doctors to teach students or show vital info to their patients. A doctor wants to highlight a whole region where a certain ailment is shown in an x-ray. He or she draws a square, as if selecting files in Explorer, on the x-ray. (3 such rectangles shown in 5a)

Under the hood a rectangle object (5b) is created with a fill of R:51/G:51/B:51 and a solid border of R:102/G:102/B:102. The underlying image is not hindered by this rectangular overlay because unlike normal transparency the colors of the image (at least in terms of pixel intensity) is preserved.

In this image below, you can see colored versions of the same - say a visual discussion by a group of doctors - each assigned a color.

It doesn't take much imagination to see the possibilities in a million different applications.

Windows does support blend modes in GDI/GDI+ - that blue selection box in XP/Explorer is a subtract or some other blend mode.

With Avalon, the possibilties are greatly increasing. Blend modes would be a VERY valuable asset to this.

Related post on Channel9 >>

Follow up blog entry >>

It's been a while since I blogged. So here's a roundup of the main events that probably 2 and a half people care about!

DigitalExile.net is live!

My long planned personal site (after the demise of after-images.net) is now finally live. www.digitalexile.net

There are lots of new photographs available (for licensing, too), and my art collection and written works will be added soon. There's also a download section with small apps, wallpapers, and some random stuff available for download. Or will be soon.

My Blog rates #1 in searches

A pleasent surprise - I saw a referer tag in my server log for this blog (hey, that rhymes!) - for someone searching for "Pandhi" (my last name, you dumbass!). I decided to follow that search link on Yahoo and voila - the #1 (and many subsequent links) are for this very blog as well as my corporate site www.nukeation.com! The same is on Google. But there, my corporate site is first, and the blog after that. Needless to say I like Yahoo! better than Google. The blog is at #1 even if you search for Dr. JJ Rawal

Republic Commando still the best!

I play an hour of Republic Commando every night before I go to bed with Gratu'acuun ringing in my ears. This is better than Half-Life (1 or 2) and Doom combined. They're great games, but this just ROCKS MY WORLD!

Radio Acting Debut

A few weeks ago, I made my recording debut as the "Human Resources Executive of IBM" on the comedy online radio show MONDAYS (Episode 25) - download it! No, no. No autographs. You get a free autograph when you sign up for the Dax Pandhi Official Fanclub.

A GIG goes a long way

I finally added a gig of RAM to my 1GB system. Needless to say it works better. Though it generates more heat, I love the tradeoff.

Jungle Coast, Costa Rica

I'm helping out with the branding and e-solutions for a dear, dear friend Cynthia Najim's new real estate business. This is one of those fun projects I rarely get anymore (if you're a client of mine, no I didn't mean it like that - your projects are just important - this is just different coz there's unreal amounts of creative energy tingling it up). If you're looking for nice, affordable, and beautiful villas, cottages, or even farms - these are the people to call. Will post their website URL as soon as I finish it.

Am planning on going to Costa Rica next year, maybe.

In the last .NET ROCKS show on the PDC, the people from Microsoft hinted (and confirmed) my previous hunch that Acrylic will be used (in part or whole) as a designer for Avalon! You heard it here first!

See previous posts in the Avalon category for details.

Okay, so I got to try out Acrylic. Not really tempting to switch from Corel for this. But I guess that if my theory of Avalon-Designer is correct, then Microsoft is more after the actual vector-drawing technology core of Acrylic. Maybe it will kill two birds with one stone and put out Acrylic as a medium-level graphics design app to push their "Start something creative" tagline.

The Acrylic interface is a bit annoying. I've always loved the docking windows of Visual Studio and CorelDRAW Suite. And you appreciate these a LOT more when you're working on a Tablet PC. The UI is somewhat creative - I'll give you that - but it STILL is annoying.

I guess there's nothing left to do but uninstall Acrylic (why waste a hundred megs on this?) and wait until my theory is confirmed or denied.

Last night, I read in Paul Thurrott's WinInfoUpdate Daily that Microsoft acquired a vector-based drawing tool (like CorelDRAW or Illustrator or Freehand) from Creature House called ACRYLIC. The first public beta is now available at: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression

I think it's a bit too coincidental that Microsoft purchases a Vector-Design tool just around the time when a visual designer for Avalon is to be added in the WinFX SDK. The Avalon people have often said that the final release (or even Beta 1 or 2) will have a visual designer and that vector-import capabilities (like importing EMF, WMF, DXF, AI, or other such vector formats into XAML code) will be added either via plugins for popular apps like Illustrator, or by some other means.

I'm guessing either Acrylic will have a Developer Edition for creating XAML stuff, or portions of Acrylic will be ported into a Visual Studio 2005 designer. As I write this, I have about 20 minutes left in the download of Acrylic Beta. Let's see what it holds.

I downloaded Beta 1 (RC1) of Avalon/Indigo/WinFX SDK a few days ago and have been playing with it.

I did not get the time to dive too deep into the March CTP, but with the Beta 1 RC1, things are smoother and more stable. And, of course, the VS2005 Beta 2 support is very helpful.

I started playing around with Nathan Dunlap's code samples and have been trying to create a sample application in XAML/VB. There is no functioality, just a slick UI. I'm trying to merge my game designer and web designer abilities to create this UI. Let's see what I can come up with. Will post it here.

Perhaps this app will be the base for the AVALONfiltered series. Part 1 is almost finished.

Well, this week was emotional. Jessica Pletcher, who I worked SO hard to get back into the Nukeation team has left us - again - to pursue higher goals (and a more stable income, not to mention a more stable [mentally] boss). As we recover from this tragic, tragic, loss (see Jess, we did appreciate you even if we didn't show it) we need new cannon fodder.

Seriously speaking, we are hiring people with the following skills/qualities:

• Sharp, Creative, Graphics Designers - must be able to create unorthodox ideas and visualize them properly in either Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe PhotoShop
• Visual C# and Visual Basic (.NET 1.1 - .NET 2.0 not required, but is a plus) programmers - must have 2 years+ experience with .NET and should be able to solve problems on their own without relying on the lazy architects. Must be proficient in both Windows and/or Web (ASP.net) development. PHP'ers need not apply. This is a Microsoft-tech-centric company.
• Flash animators - must have EXCELLENT animation skills
• Avalon artists and programmers - contact for details

A good sense of humor is required.

We pay industry standard rates, provide a LOT of freedom and space to work in. You can work from your own home or office. All you need is MSN messenger to talk to the rest of the team. Lots of perks available as well.

Please note: We are looking for freelancers only, for the moment. Freelancers will get opportunities for employment in our network in the future.

Paid and unpaid internships available. Contact us for details.

Send us a resume with a sample of your work. Programmers can point to a website with samples of their work. Artists should include a link (no attachments please) of their graphics work or mail us a CD (e-mail us for our mailing address).

Send your resumes to hr [ no spam at ] nukeation [dot] com.

To find out more about our company, please visit http://www.nukeation.com

DO NOT POST REPLIES HERE

I recently got hooked on to using Shrinkster.com a lot thanks to listening to .NET Rocks and Mondays

If you don't know what Shrinkster is, it's a website where you enter a large url (for example, a blog link, or a long search URL) and it shrinks it to something like http://shrinkster.com/4x9 - it's small, it's permanent, and it's free. No strings attached.

The thing is, sometimes I want to give a link to someone about something quickly and it is just a pain in the ass to open the browser, go to the site, and make the URL. So, I shrinksterized the process...

Behold... shrinksterNuke! This handy app creates a shrinkster URL from the shrinkster website automatically! You just enter the URL and boom - it's done. It even keeps history and has easy tracking built in.

You can download it at: http://shrinkster.com/5bl

It is a beta release. It has some bugs and tracking is not fully implemented. You can send feedback via the comments link here, or mail me directly. I'd love to hear what you think, and if you find it useful, share it with your friends.

A thanks to Karl Moore and his wonderful component WebZinc.net which handles the core functions for this app. Go buy his app! Now!

NOTE: ShrinksterNuke is built on Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.50215. You will need the .NET Runtime (same version) installed. It is available at: http://shrinkster.com/5bn

I'm going to have to wait to complete my AVALONfiltered series of articles. According to some stuff I've heard and read from Microsoft, the June 30th Beta release of Longhorn and Avalon will have some rather significant changes since the March CTP. I've personally been trying to get Microsoft to add MERGE MODES / BLEND MODES. I hope they add that in Beta 1 or Beta 2 - or at least when they finally release Longhorn. Nate Dunlap (Designer, Avalon Team) has told me that he also wants merge modes put in the Avalon core, and Pablo Fernicola (Group Program Manager, Avalon Team) has also expressed interest in it. It's really cool that even such big wigs at Microsoft listen to the little people.

So, I'm holding off on writing the articles (although I have written at least 6 pages now) until June. Beta 1 will bring important changes and I really dont want to rewrite anything - nor do I want to be proven wrong if Microsoft decides to take something out!! I vehemently hope they don't pull anything out.

I'm still open to feedback and suggestions for the AVALONfiltered articles.

Update:

I forgot to mention, Microsoft has pulled out Longhorn 4074 (WinHEC 2004 Build) from the MSDN Subscriptions. This means that they might put up Build 5048 from the recent WinHEC (2005). Let's see what info I can get from the people at Microsoft.

The new slogan Nukeation is going with is INNOVATING FORM™. The spinoff of that slogan will be carried over to our upcoming product - which is STILL untitled! That slogan will be "Innovating Form Creation".

We plan to put out a CTP soon It will require Visual Studio 2003 to work (2005 support is being added tho). It will help you create the visual portion of your app in about 1/18th of the time it usually takes a normal developer - maybe even less!

Here's a teaser wallpaper we're using internally.

wallpaperpregenerate.png (26.35 KB)

I invite you to register for the CTP at http://www.nukeation.com/ruid/ - and get a 30% discount on the software as soon as it's released in mid/late June. The CTP will be released some time in late May.

Even though it is downplayed on our current website, Nukeation is heavily involved in Developer Graphic Services. That is, in addition to our usual b2b graphics, web, and multimedia services, we also provide graphics-oriented services to the Developer community. This includes everything from creating the toolbar and application icons to designing the UI to physical package design. We do it all.

The cool thing is we've recently been hiring people who are either designers turned developers, or developers turned designers. This discovery was an accident, but those of us who are like that have churned out more successes (for us AND for our clients) than the others.

In our upcoming re-vamp of Nukeation (the company as well as the site), I intend to highlight our new(?) focus on Developer Services. In the meantime, if you would like to know more, just drop us a line to be sent the free Developer Sample Kit. We are putting up a new Sample Kit made with .NET 2.0 this weekend. All of you who have asked for it will be emailed a link to it.

In the coming months as the Avalon/WinFX beta 1 will ship, we intend to provide Avalon design services to companies that want to get a headstart on the Longhorn wave. Despite the somewhat drab presentation at WinHEC, Avalon and WinFX will be a major boon to the developer world. For more information on Avalon services, feel free to drop me a line (click that little envelope icon at the bottom of the page).

Skinning Metal

 

See also: PwopCatcher Skinning Video (new)

 

It all started when Carl Franklin, CEO of PWOP Productions Inc suddenly mailed me saying “I got a chance to change the world.” Carl was starting a software project that would change PodCasting forever (among other things). He wanted me to come up with a few concepts of what it should look like – it had to be skinned.

 

Carl had this abstract idea of something “warped”. After racking my brain for over 9 minutes, I sat down with my Tablet PC, and sketched out a quick metal skin with pencils and markers. Ripped out holes, embossed metal letters, and digital LCD screens found home on this metal object.

 

 

 

The idea got a solid ‘thumbs up’, and the work began.

 

Before I start blabbering about the whole process, I must point out that a good deal of ideas in the project were Carl’s or came from our discussions and my memory may elude me, so I may forget to mention, but that does not mean I forgot … umm, you know what I mean.

 

Metal Bashing

Now, there are some amazing tricks you can pull off in Corel PhotoPaint (or Photoshop, though PhotoPaint does have some tools that kick Photoshop’s ass) to achieve realism and create good looking metal and glass objects. But there are mixed methods that create even better effects – and that’s exactly what I opted for.

 

The first thing to do was create the base or body of the skin. It needed a solid, metallic feel – and what better to use than actual metal. I went down to a junk yard and got an old 3x3 aluminum plate. Aluminum is light, easy to manipulate and had the perfect bluish/galvanized tint. I marked out the rough outline of the body on the aluminum. Using an old rusted (purposefully) heavy pair of scissors, I took out the excess area from the sheet, leaving me with a rough shape of the body. The next step was to make careful incisions along key points of the body’s shape. The old, rusty scissors made jagged cuts. With some heavy duty gloves, I tore out the remaining excess metal with the help of the incisions. The remaining metal sheet was shaped like a ‘random’ shard of a space ship or something.

 

 

 

Now, the body needed depth. It’s a 0.5mm sheet. Very thin! So, I manually bent the edges. And made some noise with a hammer (along with some bumps and dents on the sheet). Now, the skin was looking closer to what I had in mind.

 

Point to be noted: There are limits to what you can do with a metal sheet to match the image in your head – these limits consist of mostly time, budget, and mainly your sanity. Scared of ruining this perfect shard of a spacecraft, I took pictures of it with my digital camera at 2848x2136+ - that’s very hi-res for an 800x600- skin. The brownish shine you see is my shirt. I tried to remove the coloring, but later on, it really helped me with some effects.

 

I decided to make the holes and other effects digitally. Taking samples from various regions of the body, and some hand-painted artwork on the Tablet PC, I ended up with a nice rectangular hole.

 

 

 

 

Depth was still lacking. This would need another round of photography. Taking my trusty camera, I headed off to the junkyard again and found the textures I wanted in an old hood of a car crash, a surgical lamp, and a failed metal sculpture project (I’m guessing it was that). The new photos were cleaned up and merged with some of my ‘proprietary blend effects’.

 

 

Pixel Bashing

Now came the digital part. I had to create LCD panels. Instead of going for “embedded” panels, I created solid, object-like, flat, rounded edge, glass displays. Painted them black, and placed them inside the central hole. The LCD screens would give the ‘status’ of the application. I created two warning-striped tabs, which would act as buttons, ‘behind’ the body on the top and bottom.

 

I won’t go too much into the detail of the process here, as it involves some trade secrets of mine, and the rest is just plain boring. Pixels pushed here, pixels pushed there, and so on. So, let’s skip to the future a bit.

 

And here we have, finally, a metal shard of some space voyaging vehicle with cool shines, metal anomalies, LCD displays, and wires hanging underneath it.

 

 

The PWOPCATCHER title you see in the lower right is homage to the ‘used universe’ / X-Wing paint effect from Star Wars.

 

You’re probably wondering why the makers of this space ship would make a LCD panel facing a metal wall, or why would there be buttons on OUTSIDE of the hull. Y’see this kind of technology and advanced thinking will not be seen in our race for the next 3 millennia. Remember, this is future technology. We haven’t invented it yet.

 

There were numerous changes made in the design process that weren’t in the original concept. There are some changes that will be made still. We keep improving on this, and won’t stop until it’s perfect. I’ll post updates to any major changes here.

 

Here is a screenshot of the skin in action!

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/workinprogress.jpg

 

We have actual 32-bit transparency, full antialiasing, drop shadows that haven’t been seen before in this world (at least to my knowledge), and under the slick looking exterior, is a core that is made with the sole purpose of changing the world.

 

Last but not least, if you want to see an animated timeline of this skin's development, head on over to:

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/NukePWOPSKINBORG.html 

 

Updates on the skins, the actual software and its availability, and much more will be posted as soon as it is available. You can find proper updates about the app at Carl’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/

 

I’ll be posting another short like this one about our other skin code-named ‘SmokingGlass’. It’s just as fascinating as this one, if not more so.

 

UPDATE: See the step-by-step video of this skin.

 

EQUIPMENT USED:

Hardware - FujiFilm S7000 digital camera, rusty scissors, old hammer, 1 3x3 sheet of used aluminum, grey matter (6 oz.)

Software - Corel PhotoPaint, Pwop SkinMaker (for skin definition)

I've been involved in a project called PWOPCaster with Carl Franklin of PWOP Productions Inc (www.pwop.com) and of .NET ROCKS fame (www.dotnetrocks.com). This is a very cool new podcasting client with a great content delivery system. You can find out more at Carl's blog:

http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2005/04/19.aspx 

I've been involved in the graphics/UI side of things as well as the designing of Pwop.com. Now, okay, so we're not going to talk about this until it's all done, but I can tell you this - it has been some of my best work - and the functionality these guys have written in is FANTASTIC. Keep listening to .NET ROCKS or MONDAYS (http://mondays.pwop.com) and you'll be the first to get the beta.

If you're into .NET, you will like to know that his one of the best pieces of managed code apps out there! It'll be very interesting.

I recently talked to Nathan Dunlap who works in the Avalon team at Microsoft and is a very hot designer - check out the An Hour with the Avalon team at Channel 9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=58634, where you can see him in the video and his amazing work as well - and I asked him whether Avalon will have Merge modes (Blend Modes for you Photoshop'rs) or not. He said that it is one of the top priorities for him and he also wants them badly. I'm telling you, its so good to have a real hardcore designer working amidst the developers at Microsoft. :) Anyways, so he said that community feedback helps push these features into existance.

So, this is a call to all you designers out there. Start sending feedback to Microsoft. We want blend modes. We want ADD and SUBTRACT and MULTIPLY and XOR and everything! :)

And on a related yet seperate note, I have begun work on my articles while I'm still on the Avalon kick - tho I doubt it will go away. It's a natural high for designers like me. And to have it not only co-exist, but WORK WITH MY CODE --- oh man, I'm... I'm... I'm speechless! You just cant describe the feeling. AVALON ROCKS! It just rocks. PERIOD.

I have decided that with the upcoming release of Avalon and WinFX SDK Beta, the world needs a good developer-to-designer and vice-versa "dictionary" for creation good Avalon apps. I'm currently planning on writing a series of articles (maybe try to get them published on MSDN) about Avalon, the WinFX SDK, and graphics design for Avalon.

The articles will probably be published here (if MSDN turns me down) for the moment and subsequently released as e-books with sample code and all for free. :) I'll be posting updates on the articles, their topics and expected release dates. For now, everything will be based on Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005 and the March 2005 CTP of the WinFX SDK. If there are any suggestions or questions about the whole WinFX development scene, please feel free to e-mail me and I would try to work them into the articles. Right now, the topics I want to cover are: general Avalon development, how Avalon fits in the Windows Forms world, basic UI with Avalon, 3D UI with Avalon, and Avalon timelines and animations.

UPDATE: The series has been titled "AVALONfiltered", and the first two articles will be "An idiot's introduction to Avalon" and "First crack at practical Avalon".

Avalon is by far the best decision on Microsoft's part since their move to .NET. The designer (and I mean the person, not the IDE component) has always been left out of the Windows app world. With all the mind-boggling web design that you can see out there, there is no telling what designers and developers together can create with the Avalon engine. The intrinsic support for 3D is so cool, you can't put it in words.

I've been working on a really graphics intensive software recently, and it is all being done in a flat 2D environment with PNG alpha channels. There are so many limits to all this. You can easily emulate the things you see in Avalon with proper usage of DirectX, but this is really tough to do for something as "trivial" as a UI. The underlying code layer would be hell, and modifications would be the spawn of satan. But with Avalon, it's all gone! All gone!

The even better thing is, the developer is kicked out. No offense, but developers are not usually the best people to get a UI done from. Sure you can code it all, but they (look at me - speaking as if I were not a developer) don't have the eye for consumer-response oriented design. That is where the designer comes in. That's what they're trained to do. Capture the eye with the coolest designs. And of course these are some of the main services we are offering at www.nukeation.com - avalon based design services to be added BEFORE it is released to the public.

I just jump with boundless joy whenever I see a new feature in Avalon. The impact it will make is totally understated. People still dont comprehend the full spectrum of Avalon. Wow. New UI. No. It's not just new UI - it's your ticket to very high revenues.

Just started reading the blogs I haven't had time to read in a while, and I stumbled upon Nickolas "ActiveNick" Landry's comments on the whole MVPs for VB6 movement. I have to say it is the best comment on the whole thing after Carl Franklin's "Get over it!".

To qoute Nick:

"So where am I going with this? If you started as an “unmanaged” VB developer, let me ask you something: Have you ever been challenged as to the seriousness of your choice development tool by a C++ developer before? Unless you’ve been secluded in a Y2K bunker since Windows came out, it’s probably happened. VB developers have been the target of C++ jabs for ages now (well, you know what I mean, computer ages are much shorter than historical ages) and you may wonder as to why that is. I think I can detect a glimpse of understanding in some of you. You guys have used VB 3.0 before, right?"

and

"VB is now part of the great .NET family as a first class citizen, not some unwanted child raised in the corner as an afterthought."

If you're even remotely connected to VB, go read this 'expose' at:

http://www.infusionblogs.com/blogs/activenick/articles/60.aspx 

I guess I should mention that I've been a BASIC programmer since 1987 (used 128BASIC on a ZX Spectrum+ with 128K RAM), and Visual Basic since 3.0 (well, professionally at least - and Microsoft's Version 3 of everything is always better). Go VB.

A big .!.. to all you VB 6 "stick-on"'s.